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THE CALL 

of 

A WORLD TASK 

IN WAR TIME 



J. LOVELL MURRAY 



THE GALL 

of 

A WORLD TASK 

IN WAR TIME 



J^XOVELL MURRAY 
Educational Secretary Student Volunteer Movement 



Revised Edition issued by special arrangement with the 
Student Volunteer Movement 



Published for the 

National War Work Council of 

Young Men's Christian Associations, 

by 

Association Press 

347 Madison Avenue, New York 

1918 






\^\^ 



Ou 



Copyright, 191 8, by 

STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT 

FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS 

Revised Edition, November 

age 
-^ersity 



AU.i ^ 



no 

I 

§ CONTENTS 

n 

^ I PAGE 

The Call for Reality in Religious Life ... i 



II 

The Call for a Christian Internationalism 21 

III 

The Call of New Opportunities in the 

Mission Fields 47 

IV - •' 

The Call of the World's Present Need. . . 71 

V 

The Call for a Vv'^orld Progra.m in the 

Church 99 

VI 

The Call for a Full Mobilization of Chris- 
tian Forces 124 



PREFACE 

These studies have been prepared as part of the advance 
missionary program which emanated from the Student 
Volunteer Conference held at Northfield, Mass., Janu- 
ary 3-6, 1918. It was felt by leaders of the Student 
Christian Movements in the United States and Canada that 
accompanying a call to the students of these nations for 
intensified missionary undertakings in this college year 
there should be the promise of a new course of study 
interpreting the present world situation in terms of mis^ 
sionary responsibility. It was with much reluctance that 
the writer consented to prepare a book within the brief 
compass of a month on so immense and important a sub- 
ject. The haste with which it has been written will 
account in ' part for its obvious limitations of material 
and style. For those who will use this book as a text- 
book for group study there have been added Questions 
for Thought and Discussion and Suggestions for Auxili- 
ary Reading. 

J. L. M. 
New York, February 9, 1918. 



INTRODUCTION 

TO THE THIRD (rEVISED) EDITION 

In the months that have intervened since the first edition 
of this book was printed there has been developing in 
AlHed countries a clearer discernment of the issues at 
stake in the War. This has been due partly to processes 
of education and partly to historical developments. The 
selfishness, brutality and perfidy of the German military 
command have startlingly been made manifest and their 
secret purposes have been unmasked. This has been 
true most notably in their shameless treatment of Russia 
and Roumania. Among the nations linked with Ger- 
many there has come as a result a lack of confidence 
and unity. On the other hand, among^the Allies has 
come a new unity based on a new recognition of the 
utter necessity of winning the War if the world is to be 
saved from militarism and the rule of force and saved 
to righteousness and democracy and peace. The altruistic 
and noble aims of the Allied cause have become clarified 
and have gained in fervid acceptance by the individual 
citizen. In the last hamlet of our lands it is being realized 
that every man and woman of us must stand up and 
be counted as a zealous, unsparing champion of the rights 
of humanity. 

In other words, gradually it is being recognized that 
merely winning battles, even the last battle, and rendering 
Prussianism impotent may not spell real victory for 
our cause. The extinction of Prussian militarism is only 
incidental to the supreme end for which we are fighting, 
namely, the development of a new international spirit, 
a spirit of respect, cooperation and good will that will 
fully observe the Golden Rule among nations. 

vii 



viii Introduction 

We must fortify ourselves with this great conviction, 
for ahead of us lie stress and strain and increasing 
losses. The toll of death will grow longer and the 
sacrifices we must all bear will be heavier as the weeks 
pass by. We must know that the price is none too 
great to pay. We must be convinced in our souls that 
only by going on to the end, the most bitter end, can 
we make all the past progress of humanity a success, 
ensure that the utmost sacrifices of these present desper- 
ate years are tiot in vain and guarantee that the gen- 
erations unborn will be immensely benefited. 

W"e are seeing more clearly than ever that at its root 
this world conflict is the dash of two opposite principles, 
the principles of materialism and spirituality, of brute 
force and good-will. And back of that it is the clash 
of two opposite conceptions of God — on the one hand 
as Thor, on the other hand as God, the loving Father. 
That is it. There lie our satisfaction and our hope 
amid all the pain and darkness of these evil hours. We 
are fighting for God, for the Fatherly God, for the God 
of Jesus Chris^ 

From this point of view, the impression is ever deep- 
ening that ultimately this is not a war between this 
group of nations and that group of nations, but between 
good and evil. Whatever may be said about war in 
general, the conviction is steadily taking hold that this 
War, so far as we are concerned, is not a condemna- 
tion but a vindication of the religion of Jesus Christ. 
It is the expression of a vital, victorious Christianity. 

So we are seeing that Christ is the only solution of 
the world's problem and the only hope of world democ- 
racy. He must be proclaimed to the nations. Democ- 
racy can be firmly established only where His spirit and 
teachings have been accepted. Therefore the spreading 
of His doctrine in the world is not one thing and the 
struggle against autocracy and militarism another. They 
are two aspects of one great undertaking and they are 
both urgently necessary. One is the planting of fruit- 
ful seeds, the other the uprooting of noxious weeds. 



Introduction ix 

We must fight to destroy these abominable growths. 
Equally and quite as urgently must we scatter broadcast 
the life-giving principles of liberty, of the infinite worth 
and inalienable rights of every individual child of God. 

More than ever therefore we are led to recognize now 
the international obligations of Christianity in order 
that we may faithfully fulfil them in the days that will 
follow the War. It is with these obligations as revealed 
and intensified by the War that this book is concerned. 
It makes no attempt to analyze the immediate causes of 
the conflict which with savage premeditation the Prus- 
sian military machine thrust upon the world. Nor does 
it argue the justice of the Allies* position. It takes this 
position for granted as being essentially righteous and 
Christian. It does attempt an inquiry into certain great 
constructive processes whereby Christianity not only can 
vindicate itself in international life but also can make 
good the winning of the War by preparing even in the 
least favored nations a safe dwelling place for Christian 
world democracy. The discussion of a thorough inter- 
nationalizing of our Christianity begins with the second 
chapter. 

The first chapter treats of a question of primary and 
fundamental importance to the rest of the book. The 
great nations of Asia and Africa are now vivid on our 
maps as never before. Xearl}^ all of the citizens of those 
nations are our allies. Their populations comprise the 
majority of the people in the world. Their possibilities 
are beyond our imagining. Not only are they in the 
field of our v/ar purposes as nations entitled to free 
democratic development, but some of the greatest of 
them are today facing acute problems of democracy. 
They are giving us their help. We have before us the 
amazing spectacle of non-Christian nations fighting for 
distinctively Christian principles. And they need our 
help. Most of all they need in their national life the 
ferment of the ideals of Jesus Christ. 

If it is granted that the only condition in which a true 
democracy can flourish is a condition of essential Chris- 



X Introduction 

tianity, the first lesson of all which the War brings to 
Christian men and women is the necessity of making sure 
that the Christianity which we spread among the nations 
is the real Christianity of democracy, the pure Chris- 
tianit}^ of Jesus Christ Himself. 

Indeed all of the deeper questions that the War will 
leave with us lead back to fundamental questions of reli- 
gion, to the quality of our Christianity. How are the 
losses of the War to be overtaken and the tasks of 
reconstruction performed? Kow may the gains of the 
War be held secure? How^ is peace to be made perma- 
nent? What international instrumentalities will safeguard 
the free development of nations? How may we hold the 
full benefits of nationalism, while building up a new inter- 
nationalism? How are we to perfect our own democracy, 
rid it of any taint of Prussianism and secure complete 
rights for all classes in our population? These are im- 
mense and difficult problems. But back of them all is the 
problem of human character and will, of the development 
of a new manhood and womanhood. Christian ideals must 
be made regnant in individual life. 

The fundamental question therefore with which we 
must begin this study is that of the reality of our own 
religion. 



THE CALL OF A WORLD TASK 
IN WAR TIME 

CHAPTER I 

THE CALL FOR REALITY IX RELIGIOUS LIFE 

What are we fighting for? Surely not for the mere 
winning of battles. These are but the means to mightier 
ends. After the last destruction of battle the more 
difficult task of construction will have to be undertaken. 
We shall not be content to rebuild according to the old 
order but according to a finer plan. It is for this better 
plan we are fighting. It has been described in many 
elaborate ways but in a word what we are fighting for 
is a Christian world democracy. 

We know now that we must have a world democracy 
or none at all. Democracy has once and forever passed 
all national limitations. 

Also we know now that we must have a truly Chris- 
tian democracy or none at all. Jesus Christ and democ- 
racy go hand in hand. If a genuine democracy is to take 
hold of the life of the world, the spirit and teachings of 
Christ must be made known and applied to all localities 
of the world's life. This is fundamental to a successful 
program of world democracy. It is the premise on which 
these studies proceed. In them we are to consider the 
projection of the purposes and ideals of essential, which 
is democratic, Christianity among all nations, seeking to 
discover some of the great lessons pertaining to this task 
which have been coming to us in war time. And foremost 
among the profound and urgent messages which God 
is uttering to His people in this awful hour, we hear His 



2 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

clarion call for reality in religion. To that call let us 
direct our first attention. 

Never before have the forces of righteousness been 
so thoroughly aroused to the necessity of fashioning 
an international order of justice and freedom and good 
will. And never has international idealism known such 
concerted action or made such rapid strides as in the 
past few years. But we are moving into the new world 
order through blood and fire. It was little more than 
yesterday that an influential New York daily wrote thus 
of the prospects of universal peace: 

It was nearer last year than it was the year before; it is 
nearer this year than it was last year; it is nearer now, today, 
than it wa-s on the first day of the present year, and, with an 
advancing step, that has never gone backward, through all these 
years, the prophecy is safe and beautiful that we are marching 
swiftly into the vast open of universal peace. 

That was three years before the War. How strangely 
the words fall on our ears today when over four-fifths 
of the world's population is at war.^ More than a score 
of nations are at one another's throats. Already the 
conflict has cost over $100,000,000,000. In six months the 
United States appropriated, or provided taxation meas- 
ures for, more than twenty billions. According to the 
report of the Treasury at Washington on January 31, 
1918, the United States was at that time spending $39,- 
000,000 a day for war purposes, including $15,000,000 a 
day for loans to the Allies. This amounts to $1,625,000 
every hour, or more than $450 a second. The outlay for 
direct war expenses keeps mounting steadily. The Gov- 
ernment's original estimate for the fiscal year ending 
June 30, 1918, called for over $18,000,000,000, or an aver- 
age of $50,000,000 a day.^ 

But the cost in men is more staggering. Forty mil- 



^According to the Statesman's Year Book, the population of 
the world is estimated to be 1,691,751,000. The total population 
of the belligerent countries is 1,388,264,565. 

-The twenty great wars of the last 125 years combined cost 
only $22,000,000,000. 



The Call for Reality in Religious Life 3 

lion men are under arms/ away from their productive 
pursuits and engaged actively in a fierce work of de- 
struction.^ Eight million three hundred thousand have 
laid down their lives, not including those who have 
died of disease nor the lives lost as a result of the War. 
Nearly 7,000,000 men are in prisoner-of-war camps. An 
equal number are in hospitals and it is estimated that 
about 2,500,000 are physically handicapped for life. 

But, after all, figures convey little. They bewilder 
us and our minds are already numbed to the significance 
of millions and billions. But we do know what pain 
means and anxiety and bereavement and despair. These 
make up the tragedy of countless suffering lives and 
countless darkened homes. Habitations of men have 
become smoking ruins and vast areas that were gardens 
yesterday are deserts today. It is a day of horror and 
agony to great multitudes of men and women and little 
children. And what of the morrow? Small wonder 
that hope is running low in so many lives. With les- 
sened resources and spent energies, men, and women 
equally, must set themselves to the work of salvage and 
reconstruction.^ Dr. John R. Mott put it graphically in 
a recent address when he said of war-stricken countries, 
"The curfew is going to ring late in these coming nights 
and the days of leisure will be few." 

Under the shadow of this dark tragedy the first thought 
that leaps to one's mind is the question, To what purpose 
is this loss? If it should prove to be only waste, that 
would be the great horror and tragedy of all.* And we 
shall hold it to be waste if out of all the loss and suffer- 



^Including the Russian army, now inactive. 

^Never before were more than two million engaged in any war. 

^Speaking before the Empire Club in Toronto, March 8th, 
1 91 7, Professor A. B. Macallum, of the Advisory Research Council 
of Canada, said that the cost of the War "would impose on the 
world an annual charge of $500,000,000 for a century." 

"^A trade review published in Chicago said in its issue of Janu- 
ary 5th, 1918: **lf a World War does not result in the substitu- 
tion of Service for Self as the basis of human relations its supreme 
benefit will have been lost." 



4 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

ing there does not issue a world order in which true 
principles of Christian democracy will prevail, an order 
in which right will be set above might, duty above privi- 
lege, cooperation above rivalry, the things of the spirit 
above material good, service above selfishness, minister- 
ing above being ministered unto, an order in which 
nations will recognize the Golden Rule in their dealings 
with each other/ 

Warfare has proved to be necessary. We could not 
escape the gloom of today if we are to find glory in 
tomorrow. But to bring about an international order 
such as this, war alone will not avail. There are al- 
ready ruins enough on which to climb, but mankind needs 
more than ruins to help it upward. And it needs more 
than numbers and wealth and strength and skill. We 
may mass our treasure and our men and win a thousand 
wars and still miss the prize. War in itself, however right- 
eous the cause may be, is only destructive; at best it is a 
surgical process. The problem in its essence is a moral 
and religious one and it calls for something more than 
surgical treatment. 

The one positive factor needed is Jesus Christ. He 
alone can supply the upbuilding, redemptive, vitalizing 
force that will save human society. But He cannot func- 
tion except through His followers. He cannot conquer in 
the world if He is defeated in the lives of His individual 
disciples. Not on the fields of Flanders or Galicia or 
Mesopotamia, but on the battlegrounds of men's hearts 



^President Wilson's repeated insistence that what standards are 
accepted as binding between individuals should be recognized as 
binding between nations is to many a new and startling thought. 
Some one said the other day that we have been preaching the 
Golden Rule between individuals and Machiavellism between nations. 
As recently as two years ago prominent church leaders in the 
United States could be heard to declare that the Golden Rule 
was not practicable in international relations. Multitudes of Anglo- 
Saxon Christians have been under the spell of the evil view that 
the Christian law of love, to use Bernhardi's words, "can claim no 
significance for the relations of one country to another. . . . 
Christian morality is personal and social and in its nature cannot 
be political." 



The Call for Reality in Religious Life 5 

IS raging the ultimate warfare of the hour. If the hands 
of Christ are tied today, so that He cannot transform 
the life of mankind, it is only because He does not find 
free instruments whereby He can do His supernatural, 
recreative work. It is not the profession but the fact 
of religion that is lacking. Let the religious life of those 
who name His name become a living, glowing reality 
and His miracles will multipl}^ in the whole of human 
life. 

To learn this greatest lesson of the hour we must give 
ourselves first to introspection and then to action. We 
must face steadily and humbly the disclosures of reli- 
gious weakness which the War has made and we must 
set ourselves resolutely to overcome this weakness. The 
call to reality which is sounding out today above the 
clash of the w^orld's armies is therefore a twofold sum- 
mons. 

I. A Summons to Penitent Recognition That There Has 
Been Something Amiss with Christian Civilization. 

Very evidently there has been in Christian civilization 
some deep-seated and penetrative disease. The real evil 
is not the War, but what lies back of it. Are we not 
justified in believing that the disease is of the nature of 
a malignant growth which the fires of war may help to 
sear and destroy? At all events, the War is a symptom 
and like other symptoms may be reckoned of great ad- 
vantage in betraying the disease and locating its nature 
and its causes. 

We cannot ignore the fact that this is a w^ar of so- 
called Christendom. One so-called^ Christian nation in- 
stigated a second Christian nation to pick a quarrel with 
a third Christian nation and refuse reasonable amends. 
This led a fpurth Christian nation to mobilize its forces, 
whereupon Christian nation number one declared war. 
The result was that a fifth Christian nation became a 



^Man}' people now protest against the use of the term "Chris- 
tian nation." The term is used here and elsewhere in these pages 
in the usual acceptance of the term and in full recognition that 
no nation has yet justified its right to the title. 



6 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

belligerent. When a sixth Christian nation had its rights 
shamelessly violated, forcing it into a state of war, there 
seemed to be no escape for a seventh Christian nation's 
entering the conflict. And so it went on. Of the twenty- 
three nations now engaged in the struggle, only four are 
called non-Christian. In that sense this is Christen- 
dom's war. Moreover, the line of cleavage runs through 
all of the main divisions of Christianity. Before the 
United States and Roumania entered the War, forty-six 
million Protestants were arrayed on one side, forty-five 
million on the other. Sixty-two million Roman Catholics 
were fighting against sixty-three millions of the same 
Church. The Greek Catholics were not so evenly divided, 
but they were on both sides of the encounter. 

1. As Christian nations we are partners in the sins 
that so sharply antagonized us one against the other and 
that at last ran their shears through the fabric of in- 
ternational society. We may of course justly claim that 
we are not equally sinners. Just as we may take reason- 
able pride that in our conduct of the War we and our 
Allies have not been guilty of the unspeakable horrors 
that have stained the banners of our enemies, so we may 
honestly allege that there is wide disparity between our 
share and theirs in those faults that deeply underlie the 
War. But we should frankly acknowledge that some 
degree of wrong lies at every national door and that the 
sins of materialism, selfishness, pride and social injustice 
which are behind the War are common to all the Christian 
nations. 

2. As Christian nations we are all at fault in permit- 
ting war to survive on the earth. We are not now apprais- 
ing the motives or ideals that have carried the diflferent 
nations into the present War. As for the Allied nations, 
dictates of honor and Christian duty demanded that they 
enter the struggle.^ We merely point now to the fact 



^Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson points out that one may consistently 
hold the view that war in itself is essentially evil and at the same 
time justify a "war for righteousness" as a necessary evil, to avoid 
a greater one. **The man who takes that view has apparently the 



The Call for Reality in Religious Life 7 

that in spite of the development of Christian civilization 
through the centuries Christian nations continue to re- 
sort, for the settlement of conflicting interests, to so 
stupid and unchristian and savage an instrumentality as 
war. 

The conscience against war in general has been de- 
veloping steadily and with good results within Christian 
nations. Through righteous diplomacy, through treaties 
fairly made and honorably kept and through arbitration 
agreements, many differences have been peacefully com- 
pounded which in earlier times would have been hastily 
put to the arbitrament of the sword. At the same time 
gigantic military establishments have been developed and 
provision kept ready at hand for immediate warfare. 

3. As Christian nations we have common culpability 
in the spirit of hate which we have carried into our con- 
duct of the War. There is a hot indignation against 
wrong that is not only innocent but holy. We refer 
here to sheer hatred of an enemy, which is something 
very different. 

The most Godlike thing among nations or individuals 
is love, the most Christlike thing is brotherliness. But 
how little of this feeling and attitude had been existing 
in the hearts of Christian people before the War be- 
came evident at once when war broke out. What a 
temper ! Where is the new and all-comprehensive com- 
mandment Christ gave, that Christians, including Christian 
nations, should love one another? It is forgotten in the 
"hymns of hate" that Christians are addressing to each 
other across their national borders. Listen to these 
words of a recently written German song: 

You will we hate with a lasting hate, 
We will never forego our hate, \ 

Hate by water and hate by land, ' 

Hate of head and hate of hand, 



ideal of peace, not of war. He wages war for the sake of peace. 
It is clear that there need be no war for Right unless some one 
had first made war for Wrong." — "The Choice Before Us," p. 58. 
Our present warfare is for peace as well as for righteousness. 



8 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

Hate of the hammer and hate of the crown, 
Hate of seventy millions choking down. 
We love as one, we hate as one. 
We have one foe and one alone — 
ENGLAND! 

And a multitude of his countrymen join Lissauer in the 
refrain. It is said that recently in a German city 3,000 
people attended a lecture on "How to Hate England 
Most." But other Christian nations besides Germany 
know how to hate. M. Henri de Regnier, of France, 
found a wide response among his countrymen when,, 
brooding over his country*s wrongs, he wrote : 

I swear to cherish in my heart this hate 

Till my last heart-throb wanes; 
So may the sacred venom of my blood 

Mingle and charge my veins i 

May there pass never from my darkened brow 

The furrows hate has worn! 
May they plough deeper in my flesh, to mark 

The outrage I have borne! 

By towns in flames, by my fair fields laid waste^ 

By hostages undone, 
By cries of murdered women and of babes. 

By each dead warrior son. . . . 

I take my oath of hatred and of wrath 

Before God, and before 
The holy waters of the Marne and Aisne, 

Still ruddy with French gore; 

And fix my eyes upon immortal Rheims, 

Burning from nave to porch, 
Lest I forget, lest I forget who lit 

The sacrilegious torch ! 

And a young Belgian poet writes in the sam^ strain in 
his "New Year's Prayer" : 

I pray that every passing hour 
Your hearts may bruise and beat, 
I pray that every step you take 
May scorch and sear your feet. 



The Call for Reality in Religions Life 

I pray that Beauty never more 

May charm your eyes, your ears, 

That you may march through day and night 

Beneath a heaven of tears. 

Blind to the humblest flowers that in 

The hedgerow corners bloom, 

Deaf to whatever sound or cry 

May wake in you the memory 

Of dear ones left at home. . . . 

I pray the spectres of our slain 
May haunt you in your tents — 
Vigil or sleep, whiche'er j'Ou seek — 
Nought smelling but the bloody reek 
Of our Holy Innocents. 



The translation into English is by Earl Curzon of 
Kedleston. Doubtless when it appeared there were many 
fervent Amens from the Earl's countrym_en. For there 
have been profuse expressions of intense hatred by Britons 
towards Germany. The Archbishop of Canterbury says, 
*T get letters in which I am urged to see to it that 
we insist upon Reprisals, swift, bloody and unrelenting. 
Let gutters run with German blood. Let us smash to 
pulp the German old men, women and children,' and 
so on."^ 

In France, in Belgium and even in Germany this spirit 
is far from being universal. There are many who decry 
all bitterness and hatred even in the most vigorous prose- 
cution of warfare.^ But unfortunately it is a spirit that 
runs deep with great numbers of the people. And in the 
United States and Canada many a similar sentiment is 
heard, and the "cult of hate" gains adherents by the hour. 
There is nothing surprising in all this. For hatred is an 
active leaven in war time, and it is made part of the 



^Quoted by G. S. Eddy in "With our Soldiers in France," page 

-For example, Mr. Jerome K. Jerome writes: "Our victory must 
be not only over Germans, but over ourselves. We must have 
no hatred, no bitterness. By no other means will peace be con- 
clusive." 



lo The Call of a World Task in War Time 

process of motivation for an energetic and widespread war 
spirit in the general public.^ 

How fervently we should pra}^ that the wounds in the 
body of mankind should heal clean, *'by first intention," 
as Canon Gould of Toronto says,' and that no self-right- 
eous or punitive spirit should "leave behind pockets of 
malignant germs which prevent healing, and result in 
obstinate conditions of infection, the only cure for which 
is reopening and radical measures." Surely these are 
times when every Christian man and woman should live 
close to the Lord and Master of us all, close enough not 
only to hear His steady, persistent whispering, "Recom- 
pense to no man evil for evil. Love your enemies and 
pray for them that persecute you," but also to have com- 
municated to us His own overcoming spirit of love. 

In facing these disclosures which have been made of 
common religious weakness in Christian nations, w^e are 
not concerned at this particular point to locate the blame 
for starting the War. The blame is great and is easily 
located. But the final question is religious, not political 
Just as the rifle, according to musketry instructors, has 
improved out of all proportion to the man behind the 
rifle, so the material civilizatipn of Christian nations has 
outrun its moral and spiritual resources.^ As Dr. Mott 
says, "We are killing men's bodies because in previous 
years we were killing men's souls. We are putting men 
under the sod because in earlier years we did not go to 

^There are encouraging signs of a growing sentiment against 
the development of a spirit of hatred in the public mind. Many- 
soldiers are pledging themselves to carry out their share of the 
War without hate. 

A dispatch from Washington, dated February 3, 1918, reports 
that in the last issue of "The News Bulletin" of the Four Minute 
Men, through which the American Government's 20,000 volunteer 
speakers are informed and instructed, there is a warning against 
the preaching of hate. "Hatred," it says, "has been stirred up 
in civilian populations in order to encourage enlistment, but thanks 
to the draft, this debasing feature of war is not necessary in order 
to secure and maintain our army." This is a most significant 
utterance. 

2See pamphlet, "The Discipline," W. R. Maltby, page 9. 



The Call for Reality in Religious Life ii 

the root of motive and of conduct." Written across the 
dark tragedy of the hour is the plain, hard fact that 
our form of Christianity has been found wanting. It is 
the Christianity of Jesus Christ that must be substituted. 
Mr. J. H. Oldham, in his recent notable book, puts it 
pithily: "J^sus claimed to be the Way, the Truth and 
the Life. But Christendom has rnade little serious at- 
tempt to order its national, social and industrial life 
in accordance with the way of Christ; there has been 
wanting a passionate, exultant conviction that in Him is 
to be found the truth regarding men's relations with one 
another; we have not opened our hearts wide enough to 
the inflow of that divine life which has power to infuse 
health and vigour into the social order. "^ 

Nor are we concerned at the moment to defend Chris- 
tianity against the charge that it has failed. Our brief, 
were we to do so, would be very simple, namely, that 
Christianity has never had a chance to fail in national 
or international relations, never having been fully tried. 
True, Christianity did not prevent the War, but should 
we abandon it on that account? Only if we abandon 
everything else that men had hoped was leading away 
from war — commerce, diplomacy, education, ethical cul- 
ture, community of interest, international law, humani- 
tarian spirit, and a host of other influences that were 
operating between nations but that failed to prevent the 
War. No, we are going right ahead with our commerce 
and our education and our international sanctions and all 
the rest and we are going right ahead with our Chris- 
tianity. 

Who will say that Christianity has failed, when it is 
now revealing itself as the one solution for the problem, 
the one cure for the disease? It is true that the religion 
of Jesus Christ was never more needed; but it is , also 
true that its potencies were never more plain. What 
spirit is it that is protesting so vigorously against war 
and all those selfish, anti-social and materialistic factors 



^"The World and the Gospel," page 7. 



12 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

in human society that produce wars, but the spirit of 
Christ? The rising tides of democracy, what are they 
but the mighty surging of His spirit who calls upon all 
men to stand together on one level and utter with Him 
those blessed and equalizing words, ''Our Father"? The 
voices crying out for a new internationalism based on 
righteousness and service, what are they but the echo of 
His voice Who "did no sin, neither was guile found in 
His mouth," and Who at the last gave His flesh for the 
life of the world? It is Jesus Christ that the world needs 
to bind up its gaping wounds, to give hope to its burdened, 
sorrowful heart, and to control its life in purity and love. 
W^hen He is lifted up. He will draw all men unto Him, 
to meet their individual requirements and to teach them 
how to live together in brotherly peace. He has not 
failed. Men have failed. 

As we realize our share in those corporate sins that 
lie behind the War, we should give ourselves to humilia- 
tion and confession before God. Nothing would end the 
awful conflict so quickly and satisfactorily and finally as 
that each Christian nation should recognize and repent of 
its faults of selfishness and hate, in whatever degree they 
exist, and kneeling humbly at the altar of confession 
should find there the bowed and penitent heads of the 
other nations that are called by the name of the loving 
Christ. 

n. A Positive Summons to Let Our Religion Freely 
Express Itself in Both Thought and Life. 

If the first demand is for a penitent recognition of our 
share in the corporate sin of Christendom, the second 
demand is for amends. It is the aggressive side of the 
summons to reality. 

Whichever way religion faces, whether upon the in- 
dividual life, the life of the community or the life of the 
world, it is met today by the demand for reality. 

I. It is abundantly true that individual human lives 
are crying out for reality in the things of religion. This 
is an hour in which the souls of men are hard beset for 
certainties to which they can make fast. When the 



The Call for Reality in Religious Life 13 

great storm broke upon the world, some found that a 
light anchor in yielding sand would not hold. And some 
found that they had been leaning against a sheltered dock 
but had never been m.oored. And now they are adrift on 
a turbulent sea. Their cry is pathetic for pilots who can 
bring them to a safe and sure anchorage. Those who 
held to doctrines because they were traditional, those 
who held to doctrines because they were radical, those 
who held to doctrines because they fitted in with certain 
foregone hypotheses, have had their eyes opened. Not 
suppositions, but certainties are demanded, not observ- 
ances and dogmas, but realities. 

It is only to be expected that those men v/ho are closest 
to the grimness and ugliness of the present world situa- 
tion, and who often for weeks at a time are momentarily 
looking death in the face, should be foremost in their 
demand for reality in the religion that is presented to 
them. Mr. Sherwood Eddy multiplies instances of this 
demand in his book, "With Our Soldiers in France," and 
other religious workers among the troops corroborate 
him. Rev. John AicNeill, the evangelist, now a chaplain 
in France, writes that "soldiers now want straightforward 
dealing with their spiritual needs and problems.^ They 
waxit the 'central verities,' no beating round the bush, no 
skilful skating near the subject and evading it, no velvet- 
glove dealing with their failings, but honest, frank, 
straightforward messages that point the way to hope and 
victory— given, of course, with sym.pathy of understand- 
ing and tenderness of appeal. This is what the men want 
and will listen to."^ 

It is not only those that are living in the midst of 
suffering and looking into the face of death and upon 
whose lives temptations are beating fiercely who long 
for spiritual truths which are eternally reliable and suf- 



^The same longing is found in the training camps on this side 
of the water. See the article, *The Soul of the Soldier," by 
Joseph H. Odell, in The Outlook, Dec. 26, 191 7. 

^The Missionary Review of the World, November, 191 7, page 
865. 



14 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

iicient.' Thoughtful men and women everywhere are 
reexamining their faith and trying to search out its vital 
elements. There is a need that all of us should reorgan- 
ize our religious thinking around the central fact of 
Jesus Christ as the Divine Son of God and the living 
Redeemer and Lord of men. 

This should be a period to date from in creedal history. 
It is becoming strikingly apparent today that the really 
essential features of our faith are those which are com- 
mon to all the branches of organized Christianity. How 
dull we shall be if in all our communions we do not 
begin to throw a new and sharp emphasis upon these 
vital elements of faith, letting the elements which are' 
less essential to pure Christianity, although more charac- 
teristic of our own divisional formulae, fall into the back- 
ground. Let us waste no regrets if the upheaval of these 
years shakes Christianity clear of many of its historical 
shroudings of dogma and of formalism. As in our sepa- 
rate Christian divisions we fall back upon what is essen- 
tial to Christianity we shall come to realize anew our 
oneness in Christ as a body of believers and, however 
much of organic unity may develop, we shall draw closer 
together in mutual understanding and common effort. 

2. A demand for reality is being made also by our 
national life. We realize how impelling the call is for 
a vital and truly conquering religion when we consider 
the great sections of our corporate life that before the 
War were pagan areas. The task before the Christian 
Church even at that time to carry the spirit of her Lord 
into all human relationships was a staggering one. Our 
Christianity was not vital and stalwart enough to carry 
the strain. But when to these demands that community 
life and all human contacts be fully Christianized there 
will be added after the War the vast problems of re- 
construction, readjustment and reconciliation, what will 
organized Christianity be prepared to offer as a remedy 
and a hope? There is no basis for despair, for Jesus 

^See the article, **The Eternal, Changing Gospel," by Professor 
E. I. Bosworth, in The North American Student, January, 1918. 



The Call for Reality in Religious Life 15 

Christ is fully competent to meet all the demands that 
human society can make upon Him. It rather is a ring- 
ing summons to the Church to recognize her day of 
visitation, to forget non-essentials in training every 
energy on the fulfilment of her task, to show her faith 
by her works. 

More specifically, men are asking today for a religion 
that will so take hold on the national life of Christian 
peoples as to bring wars to an end. Convinced in our 
deepest souls that, facing conditions as they were, we 
were bound to enter this war, we are yet forced to admit 
that if Christianity had been freely expressed in its fol- 
lowers, it would have ended wars long ago. Whenever 
there will be enough of Christ in our Christianity, that 
will happen. Mr. Henry Morgenthau, formerly American 
Ambassador to Turkey, once said to a friend that ^'Jesiis 
has exercised more influence on human history than any 
other personality. We shall never get out of war except 
by following His teachings.'' The overwhelming majority 
of thoughtful minds share Dr. Fosdick's conviction that 
Christianity is sure to end warfare as it increasingly con- 
trols the conceptions and lives of its followers. He draws 
the parallel of slavery. Slavery and Christianity "lived 
in peace together.'* But the time came when "men saw, 
with regard to slavery, the clear implications of the Gos- 
pel ; they perceived that Christianity and slavery could not 
perpetually live together in the same world. The issue 
was drawn: Christianity would he a failure if it did 
not stop slavery. And from the day that the issue was 
drawn, the result was assured. It was not Christianity 
that failed; it was slavery. . . . This, too, is a climactic 
day in history. For so long time the Gospel and war 
have lived together in ignoble amity. If at last the dis- 
harmony between the spirit of Jesus and the spirit of 
war is becoming evident, then a great hope has dawned 
on the race. . . . Christianity will indeed have failed if 
it does not stop war!''^ This is the definite and alluring 

^Harry E. Fosdick, "The Challenge of the Present Crisis," pages 
18, 19, 20. 



1 6 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

task of men and women who are followers of the Prince 
of Peace and worshippers of the God *'who maketh wars 
to cease unto the end of the earth." 

3. But a yet larger demand for reality in religion rises 
up out of the world's need. If we fail to recognize the 
universality of the Christian religion we fail to under- 
stand it or to realize its power. It is just because Chris- 
tianity is competent and sufficient to meet the needs of 
the entire world that it is adequate for the needs of any 
one nation or any one life. Its divine message and 
errand are for all mankind. But religion lacking in 
reality can never become a universal religion. It is with- 
out the vitality required both for the world's need and 
for its own projection. 

We who stand at the distributing bases of Christianity 
must ever remember that the kind of religion we develop 
here is the kind of religion we send abroad. There is 
no potency of angels to change it in the process of export 
and no alchemy of the salt seas to alter it in transit. Well 
may we consider therefore in solemnity whether there 
are genuineness and vitality enough in the religion and 
the democracy we now hold to make them fit not only 
to survive but to be propagated and to become victorious 
throughout the world. It is a searching question that 
was recently asked, "Is the Christianity we are sending 
from land to land loaded with some fatal disparagement 
such as forbids its wide expansion?" To quote Mr. Old- 
ham again : 

The attitude of the non-Christian peoples towards Christianity 
will be determined in the end by what Christianity actually is in 
practice, and not by what missionaries declare it to be. . . . The 
Christian protest against the unchristian forces in social and na- 
tional life must be clearer, sharper and more potent than it has 
been in the past. It may be that the Church as it was before 
the War could never have evangelized the world; that its witness 
had not the penetrating force necessary for so gigantic an under- 
taking.i 



^J. H. Oldham, "The World and the Gospel," pages 20, 21. 
The reader is referred to the first two chapters of the book for 
an excellent treatment of this whole subject. 



The Call for Reality in Religious Life 17 

The sobering question challenges us sharply, Is our reli- 
gion really worth giving away to other nations? Is mine? 
Every Christian life is a point of export for Christianity. 
The call to reality culminates in this demand that each 
of us develop within his own life, in order that it may 
be worth communicating, a Christianity that is simple, 
direct, essential, dynamic. Christlike, because it is genuine. 

Are we then to withhold our religion from other lands 
until it has become purified and thoroughly potent in our 
own land? There are those who contend that while 
"there is so much to do at home," the sending abroad 
of our Christianity is an error in tactics and a betrayal 
of patriotism. They say, "First let us carry Christianity 
into all our attitudes and relationships at home and then 
we shall be in a position in all good conscience and sound 
logic to carry it abroad." But in such a proposed sequence 
both conscience and logic break down. The whole genius 
and history of Christianity are against it. In following 
this procedure we should never catch up with the first 
part of the program and the world would wait forever 
for Christ and His ideals of democracy. 

Indeed, one strong reason why we should at once share 
our religion more widely with other nations is that a great 
enriching of our democracy and purifying of our religion 
would result therefrom. When religion is restricted in 
its application, it loses in vitality. Its health demands that 
there be an outlet to the ends of the earth for its truth 
and its benefits. Professor William Adams Brown does 
not exaggerate when he says that "unless we can make 
Christianity in fact what the missionar}^ consciousness sees 
it to be we shall soon have no Christianity worthy of the 
name."^ Localize religion and you deaden it. If the send- 
ing forth of Christianity were to issue in no benefit 
whatever to any other nation, the missionary task would 
still demand a place of primacy in the functions of the 
Christian Church. The more any individual life com- 
municates its religion to other lives, the more religion it 



^International Revieijj of Missions, October, 191 7, p. 510. 



1 8 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

generates for itself. The more religion any church ex- 
ports, the more it develops for its local requirements. 
The more organized Christianity as a whole becomes mis- 
sionary, the more it becomes united, robust and socially 
competent at home. 'The evangelization of the world in 
this generation." Let a man drive that stake and tie his 
soul to it and there will be reality in his religion. 

Entirely apart from these reflex benefits to ourselves, 
there are three compelling reasons why we should not 
delay in propagating our religion among the nations. 

One is in order to give proof of whatever reality there 
is in our religious life. Is it not true that a Christian 
who knows that his religion is meant for all humanity 
and that all humanity is in great need of it, but who is 
not concerned to have it applied beyond the boundaries 
of his own nation, is a Christian to whom and in whom 
religion is not very real? As Jesus Christ becomes a 
living reality to any man or woman, dominating all of life 
and satisfying all of life, there develops within that man 
or woman a passionate desire that all men should share 
His power and His peace. You can tell how much a man 
prizes his religion by his zeal to communicate it. Vital 
Christianity demands its propagation. The oft-quoted 
words of Archbishop Whately set forth the case admir- 
ably: "If my religion is false, I am bound to change it; 
if it is true, I am bound to propagate it.'* The best way 
to prove our conviction that our religion is not "played 
out" is to spread it abroad. 

Another reason for the immediate disseminating of our 
religion on an enlarged scale lies in the acute need of other 
nations for it. If the events of the past few years have 
demonstrated that with all our civilization and education 
and humanitarianism and ethical culture Jesus Christ is 
the only hope of the Christian nations, what words will 
express the hopelessness of the nations we call non-Chris- 
tian if He be not carried into their life as a purifying, 
energizing, uplifting force? Through the centuries the 
sin and suffering and darkness and despair of those lands 
have cried out for the living Christ. But in this bitter 



The Call for Reality in Religious Life 19 

hour, which throws its gloom and its tragedy across their 
Hfe as across ours, how much more pressing and pathetic 
is their need for Him. And that need will be accentuated 
yet further by causes which the War is developing. Now, 
as never before, Jesus Christ is ''the Desire of nations." 

Finally we come to a most convincing and timely reason 
for the immediate disseminating of our religion, namely, 
that thereby we may make good the gains which we seek 
through the War. This is a point we can scarcely over- 
emphasize. If we are without hypocrisy in our statements 
of the issues we fight for, if the noble utterances of the 
President of the United States are a measurable expres- 
sion of the aims of the Allies, then we are waging in 
Europe and Western Asia and Africa a war for the rights 
and welfare of mankind. We are prepared to go steadily 
on until a victory is secured which will make every part 
of the world a safe abode for democracy. "The Kingdom 
of God is first righteousness and then peace." But let 
us not forget whence democracy has come. It is Jesus 
Christ Who brought the ideals of democracy into the 
world and Who is keeping them and developing them in 
the world. Take His influence from any nation and that 
nation's democracy will die overnight. Two-thirds of the 
people in the world know nothing of Him and His demo- 
cratic ideals. The value of a human life, the sacredness 
of personality, the essential equality and brotherhood of 
all men and the responsibility of each to all are lessons 
men learn from Christ. Is it likely that any land where 
they have not been learned is going to say, *'Go to, let 
us become a true democracy" ? It is the wide proclamation 
and acceptance of the teachings of Jesus that will make 
the great non-Christian areas of the world safe for democ- 
racy, for He is its Author and Exemplar and Champion. 
"Whom the Son makes free is free indeed." For this 
reason Dr. Robert E. Speer speaks of foreign missions 
as "a great peaceable and constructive agency of equaliza- 
tion, transformation and freedom." 

It is clarifying and stimulating to realize that waging 
the War and spreading Christianity are not separate 



20 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

undertakings, but that the tearing down process of the 
one and the building up process of the other have the 
same goal. That goal is nothing less than the realization 
of the Divine purpose for humanity, a purpose which 
centers in the infinite value and sacred rights of every 
child of the Heavenly Father in every nation of the 
earth. These ideals are foundation principles of democ- 
racy. A great material' force has suddenly risen in 
Europe to attack them. The attack must be beaten down 
so that those principles shall be preserved in Christian 
nations. At the same time they must be made indigenous 
in non-Christian nations through the liberating power of 
Jesus Christ. As we bear in mind the ultimate issues that 
are involved, we realize how futile it would be to win 
the War in Europe if at the same time we failed to press 
with redoubled vigor its constructive counterpart, which 
is the dissemination through all the world of the demo- 
cratic spirit and teaching of Jesus Christ. Let us see to 
it that nothing of the sacrifice being made by the legions 
of valiant men who represent us in Europe shall come 
to nought through our dullness of vision or our lack 
of loyalty to the larger interests of the Kingdom. Alfred 
Casalis, a young French soldier who at the age of eighteen 
was killed in a bayonet charge, said shortly before his 
death : "This war must not be sterile ; from all these 
deaths there must burst forth new life for all mankind."^ 
Our men yonder are prepared to give "the last full meas- 
ure of devotion" on their front; many have already given 
it. What measure are we prepared to give on this other 
front — of the world's evansrelization ? 



^"For France and the Faith," Letters of Alfred Eugene Casalis, 
page 75. 



CHAPTER II 

THE CALL FOR A CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 

The thoughtful follower of Jesus Christ has much to 
explain today. He has to explain the devastated areas 
of the earth, its darkened homes, its widows and orphans 
and refugees, its lines of cross-capped mounds that keep 
growing ever longer, the anguish of its hospitals, the men 
whose bodies or spirits are broken for life, the hate and 
savagery with which the strife is being waged. He has 
to explain the fact that over four-fifths of the race of 
men are engaged in the brutalizing work of human 
butchery and are not only exhausting their resources of 
manhood and womanhood, of treasure and science and 
skill and acumen, in the horrible business, but are plan- 
ning to go on and on with it. 

He may assert in all truth that neither Canada nor the 
United States had anything to do with starting the War, 
that their aims and those of their allies are just and 
noble, that a Christian idealism more than anything else 
constrained them to enter the conflict and that force of 
arms seemed to be the only available instrumentality for 
the triumph of that idealism. But he has still to account 
for the twofold fact of war itself, hideous, sulphurous 
war, and of the pride and greed, suspicion and jealousy, 
selfishness and materialism that lie back of the War ;^ and 



^Dr. Sidney L. Gulick says: "The causes of the European tragedy 
are now fairly clear. In brief, they are the selfish, national and 
racial ambitions, aggressions and oppressions, justified by the 
materialistic theory of evolution through the struggle for existence 
and the survival of the strongest, the conviction that might and 
need make right, secret diplomacy, intrigue, falsified international 
news, cultivated suspicion, fear, animosity, and enormous expendi- 
tures for military preparedness." — "America and the Orient," 
pp. 2, 3. 

21 



22 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

in the end he is obHged to admit that the spirit of Jesus 
is being flouted and denied and brought to an open shame. 

In this chapter we come up to the need of Christianity 
for a great vindication. What impression must the War 
be producing on the minds of the non-Christian peoples 
of the world, even those that have become involved in it? 
Many Christians in the Western nations, facing the prob- 
lems of suffering and sin, have found their faith wavering 
and have been asking, ''Is God really good?" ''Does He 
really care ?" "Can Christ really be alive and actively at His 
task in the world today?" Should we wonder if similar 
questionings are in the minds of non-Christians the world 
over? Should we blame men of the brown and black 
and yellow races if they say, "So there's your Christianity ! 
There's your civilization, of which you boasted that Christ 
was at the heart of it Its foundations are giving way. 
Our religions may be blamed for many things, but it can- 
not be charged that they ever produced or permitted such 
destruction and carnage as we see within Christian coun- 
tries today." 

Multitudes, of course, do not argue as far as this, and 
many argue beyond it and make a just distinction between 
essential Christianity and the civilization that has been 
called Christian. But, as Mr. Oldham says, "The spec- 
tacle of peoples which bear the name of Christ, seeking 
to tear one another to pieces, cannot but be a shock to the 
faith of the Church in the mission field and a stumbling- 
block to thoughtful non-Christians.'" Count Okuma, oi 
Japan, recently said in effect to a Christian leader fron 
the United States, "Many thoughtful Japanese are now 
questioning the value of Western civilization. Perhaps 
our friends in America will not be so sure now aboui 
having something to give us." Some non-Christian Chinese 
not long ago were found praying that their gods woulc 
stop the awful slaughter in Europe. Even the least ad 
vanced and enlightened peoples must share in the surprise 
That is what gives pathos to the humor of a cartoon whicl- 



ij. H. Oldham. "The Decisive Hour: Is It Lost?" p. 9. 



The Call for a Christian Internationalism 23. 

appeared in the London Punch showing two barbarians, 
very fierce and very black in their crude war regalia, sing- 
ing together a lusty duet. The caption of the cartoon was 
"The Black Man's Burden" ; beneath was written, "Refrain 
by natives of South Africa and Kikuyu," and the title 
on the songsheet was, "Why do the Christians rage?" 

The ugly fact is that the name of the religion of our 
Lord which is in our keeping has been besmirched and 
has become a byword among the nations. The new 
question that has arisen in the minds of the non-Christian 
peoples regarding the worth of Christianity is perfectly 
fair and cannot be answered by a few earnest words of 
explanation. The Confucianist in China, the Moslem in 
Egypt, the pagan in Patagonia are entitled to a better 
and more practical answer, an answer that will really 
vindicate the true character of Christianity. 

To the question as to how this vindication may be made 
there can be but one answer, namely, through a positively 
Christian internationalism. 

It has been evident that a new internationalism has 
been on the way during recent years. Dr. Mott wrote in 
19 14: "Every day civilization is becoming more and more 
international. National thought, national custom and 
national action are giving way in every sphere to inter- 
nationalism. Races which have had nothing in common 
are discovering increasingly their interdependence, and 
are seeking earnestly to understand each other and to find 
ground for cooperation. For thousands of years the East 
and West have lived apart; but it becomes more and more 
evident that their destinies are blended and that for 
all the future they must live together."^ But the time 
has arrived when the new internationalism is to become 
a more widely experienced fact. The reshaping of in- 
ternational relations after the War will be the historical 
occasion for its realization. "We are living in a time of 
plasticity. The old moulds have been broken and civiliza- 
tion will be re-formed." It will be a new international 



^John R. Mott. **The Present World Situation," pp. 99, 100. 



24 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

order, but will it be an essentially better order? We 
must bear in mind that, as a writer in The New Republic^ 
puts it, *'the organization of this better international 
society will not accrue automatically as the result of vic- 
tory." By no means. A radically improved international 
order will come to pass only if in the writing of the 
final peace terms and in the future agreements and re- 
lationships between the nations more of the spirit of 
Christ be introduced than has ever before been exhibited 
in international affairs.^ 

The Anglo-Saxon nations of North America may play 
an important part in bringing about this better order. 
They have entered the War without selfish purpose or 
desire. They may foresee trade expansion or other ad- 
vantages that would not have come to them had they 
not become belligerents, but it cannot in justice be said 
that either Canada or the United States entered the War 
with any conscious purpose of selfish gain. The good they 
strive for at tremendous sacrifice is the good that they 
wish to share with all humanity. Again and again has 
this ideal been expressed by President Wilson, as when he 
said, in addressing a joint session of the two houses of 
Congress on April 2, 1917 : 

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must 
be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We 
have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. 
We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation 
for the sacrifices we shall freely make. W^e are but one of the 
champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when 
those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom 
of nations can make them. 

So far, so good. Our war aims up to the present are 
unselfish and Christian and it must be the effort of every 
Christian citizen of these countries to maintain them on 
this lofty plane and to guard them from any admixture 



^Issue of August 18, 1917. 

-A very searching and practical treatment of this subject is 
outlined in Dr. S. L. Gulick's "A New Era in Human History," 
a four-weeks course for group study and discussion. 



The Call for a Christian Internationalism 25 

of lower motives. But we must go further. If we are 
to do our share in making the new internationaHsm thor- 
oughly Christian, there are three main requirements 
that must be met. 

I. We Must Develop an International Mind Among 
Christians. 

Provincialism is one of the fundamental and besetting 
sins of the United States. Canada, perhaps by reason 
of her imperial connections, is less faulty in this respect, 
but breadth of outlook could hardly be reckoned a dis- 
tinguishing trait of the average Canadian. On both sides 
of the line the recent years have registered a steady 
improvement, a farther look and a better perspective, but 
the degree of insularity that impoverishes and stultifies 
us still is appalling. In a day when the interests of the 
nations are so interlocked, when improved communica- 
tions are abolishing distance, when the maps of the world 
keep shrinking on our walls, provincialism in any quar- 
ter is an anomaly. Let us with one mind recognize that 
national isolation is forevermore impossible, doubly so 
by reason of this War in which more than four-fifths 
of us who inhabit the world today have mingled our 
possessions and our lives and our concentrated thought 
and which will serve to strengthen and multiply our con- 
tacts in the years to come. Now, if never before, the 
minds of all of us must shed their provincialism and 
move out from county and township limitations into the 
large inviting areas of world interests. Many Americans 
today are thinking in national terms, many Canadians in 
imperial terms, many Asiatics in continental terms, many 
Latin Americans in terms of a hemisphere. But there 
are far too few really international minds engaged in a 
consideration of the affairs of the day.. 

Particularly is it true that Christians should think by 
a world map. "Surely we of all men ought to stand for 
the great conviction that there is only one race and that 
is the human race." Jesus set no narrow national limits 
for His kingdom. He intended that its message and its 
gifts should be equally for all. It would be a fallacy 



26 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

to restrict the time limits of the Kingdom to the era 
of Jesus and the apostles and it is equally fallacious to 
confine its space limits to any portion of the world's popu- 
lation. As Dr. Fosdick says, ''A Christianity that is not 
international has never known its Master."^ 

All logical men are either individualists or world citizens. 
There is no consistent middle ground. The Lord's Prayer 
of the individualist runs thus, *'My Father, Who art in 
Heaven, give me this day my daily bread and forgive me 
my trespasses, Amen." The Lord's Prayer of the world 
citizen utters verbatim the prayer which our Lord taught. 

What are the characteristics of the international mind? 

1. For one thing, it seeks to inform itself regarding other 
countries and races. A mind does not change from the 
parochial to the universal overnight. It must be submitted 
to an exacting discipline of inquiry and investigation. 
More than any others those who claim to be citizens in 
the world Kingdom of Jesus Christ should be painstak- 
ing in their study of people and conditions in all coun- 
tries. How fascinating, how stimulating to the spiritual 
life and how rewarding in one's cultural development this 
study is we need not here consider. The point to be noted 
is that the actual interests of every disciple of the uni- 
versal Christ lie wherever men live who need Christ and 
that the duty of becoming intelligent in regard to humanity 
the world around is one no Christian can escape.^ 

2. In the second place, the international mind develops 
right conceptions of nationalism. As one contact has kept 
piling on another among the nations of the world it has 
inevitably resulted in the growing consciousness of each 
as a national entity. The Great Wall of China in the 
days of her isolation did not give her a true sense of 
nationhood. But when she came out from her seclusion 
and her national life began to touch the national life of 
other peoples, she at once began to develop a national 



^**Thc Challenge of the Present Crisis," p. 76. 
-For a fuller discussion of this subject see pamphlets published 
by the Student Volunteer Movement. 



The Call for a Christian Internationalism 27 

self-consciousness. Today in every nation of the world 
there is either a strong or a rapidly growing sense of 
nationhood. Is this to be deplored as militating against 
the development of an international consciousness? Far 
from it. For there is no conflict between the two. An 
ardent Canadian patriot may be a British Imperialist and 
by the same token a world citizen. The international 
mind not only emancipates the national mind, it glorifies 
and enriches it. It raises patriotism above all noise and 
buncombe and brag and gives it a lofty moral quality. 
**Patriotism," says Lord Bryce, "consists not in waving 
a flag but in striving that our country shall be righteous 
as well as strong." The new Christian internationalism 
will embrace the redeemed nationalism of many peoples. 

But nationalism must be redeej;ned. Essential as it is, 
it may have many blemishes. Dr. Gladden recently said 
that he was afraid of an "outburst of the disease of 
nationalism." One of its perils is pride. Does anyone say 
that the Germans have elevated their national pride to^ 
the point of insolence towards man and blasphemy against 
God? Let him remember that though they may represent 
the high type of national arrogance they are not the only 
sinners. Like the Pharisees who felt so secure in their 
special privileges and sacred traditions as to say, "We 
have Abraham to our father," and let it go at that, 
there are man^^ Canadians who seem to feel that since 
Canada is Canada all will be well in the end, for are they 
not the specially favored of God? And there are many 
Americans who place their confidence in the size and 
wealth and prestige and past achievements of their na- 
tion and assume that it is the elect among the nations 
of the earth. The man is a moral ostrich who buries 
his head in the sand of the cheap assumption that there 
is any particular Divine concern for his own particular 
nation and who says, as some one has put it, "God 
takes care of fools, children and the United States." And 
England and France and the other Christian states, have 
they not the same evil of national pride to be repented 
of? 



28 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

Another peril of nationalism is self-righteousness. If 
only it were as easy to forsake this sin as it is to acquire 
it! How ready we are to stand on so high a pinnacle 
of the temple that we can look over the faults of the 
farthest nation and overlook those of our own. What a 
facility we have to camouflage this self-righteousness as 
loyalty, as we cry out those pagan words of false patriot- 
ism, ''My country, right or wrong." How ready we are 
to play up our qualities of independence and ruggedness 
and resourcefulness and to neglect the weightier matters 
of the law, mercy and purity and sincerity and social 
righteousness. How quick we have been with the finger 
of scorn in these recent months, pointing it this way and 
that at the enormous sins of our enemies and forgetting 
that the root evils in those nations are to be found in 
varying degrees in the national life of ourselves and our 
allies. Is it possible that our very consciousness that 
the cause which we are defending in Europe is a just 
and holy one is adding to our self-complacency? God 
will have to forgive us much if the recognition of short- 
comings in others does not lead us to self-examination 
and penitence and a resolute purpose to set our own 
house in order. 

And another peril of nationalism is selfish ambition. 
This sin has never been monopolized by Germany. With 
all Britain's wonderful record of international fair play 
and beneficent colonization, her ideals have been lowered 
by selfish dreams of territorial, as well as commercial, 
conquest. And Canada's ambitions for the world great- 
ness of the Empire and for her own place of power within 
the Empire are not above reproach. In the United States 
there is a widespread zeal for a place of world leader- 
ship that is not based on any humanitarian motive. Seven 
Seas, published for the Navy League of the United States, 
has this to say : 

World Empire is the only logical and natural aim of a nation. 
. . . The true militarist believes that pa'^.ifism is the masculine and 
humanitarianism is the feminine manifestation of natural degeneracy. 
... It is the absolute right of a nation to live to its fullest in- 



The Call for a Christian Internationalism 29 

tensity, to expand, to found colonies, to get richer and richer by 
any proper means, such as armed conquest, commerce and diplomacy.^ 

The Washington Herald seconds the motion: 

Great Britain and the United States going hand-in-hand to 
lead the world into a warless era is only a beautiful dream. Bombs 
and dollars are the only things that count today. We have plenty 
of one. Let us lay in a good supply of the other and blast a path 
to world leadership as soon as opportunity presents itself .^ 

These are the utterances of selfish nationaHsm gone mad. 
They do not express the ideals of the majority, but they 
reflect aspirations of national self-seeking which are all 
too current today. 

The international mind delivers nationalism from these 
perils of self-confidence, self-righteousness and self-in- 
terest. It leaves men true to their local patriotisms but 
lifts them to a higher loyalty. "I see now," said Edith 
Cavell, a few hours before her execution, "that patriotism 
is not enough. I must die without hatred or bitterness 
toward anyone." It reminds nationalism that even in its 
highest glory it is not an end in itself and calls it to 
lay tribute its special gifts and ideals to the common 
service of humanity. "Nationality is sacred to me, because 
I see in it the instrument of labor for the good and 
progress of all men." In these words Mazzini was the 
voice of the international mind. In his vision of the 
Holy City, John observed that "the Kings of the earth 
bring their glory into it," each nation bearing its own 
distinctive gift, which when emptied into the common 
advantage of all becomes its glory. 

Will the separate gift of France be the splendor of 
sacrifice? This alone is enough to make her immortal. 
Will the distinguishing gift of the United States be the 
ideal of liberty? All the crises of her national life have 
gathered about this controlling passion. Will the dis- 
tinctive gift of Canada be the power of self-realization 
through service? She is losing her life in the Empire's 
cause and finding it in her own growing nationhood. 

^Articles by Edward H. Finlay, September and November, 1915- 
^Quoted in The Christian Statesman, January, 191 7. 



30 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

3. A third characteristic of the international mind is 
that it takes a respectful and friendly attitude to other 
national and racial societies. It is intolerant of any 
power that would question the right of every nation, 
even the smallest, to the opportunity for self-realization, 
free development and expanding life. Its racial judgments 
are kindly. It recognizes the interdependence of all na- 
tions. It respects the high qualities of each and in hu- 
mility awaits the lessons it may learn and the gifts it 
may receive from each. And its attitude towards other 
nations is serviceable. In the spirit of Jesus it demands 
more than common decency and a square deal. If in one 
hand it holds the scales of justice it holds in the other 
gifts of friendly service. And in this way of service it 
assumes the nation will realize its worth and its destiny. 
"Not what a nation gains," says Admiral Sir David 
Beatty, "but what it gives makes it great." 

Coupled with the duty of developing for one*s self an 
international mind there goes the duty of building up in 
others the same psychological and moral attitude. It is 
to be thought of in terms both of a personal attainment 
and of a propaganda. Professor William Adams Brown 
considers that to develop within man the missionary con^ 
sciousness — which means the international mind made 
fully Christian— is "not a mere technical matter for 
specialists" but is "man's supreme task and his most 
splendid opportunity."^ 

We see, then, that if the true character of Christianity 
is to be vindicated before the world there must first of all 
be developed among Christians an international mind, by 
which we mean a mind that is intelligent regarding other 
peoples, that has developed a true conception of national- 
ism and that holds toward other nations a respectful and 
friendly attitude. And this brings us up to the second 
requirement. 

11. We Must Christianize all our International Contacts^ 

It is many years since Western civilization began to 

^International Review of Missions, October, 191 7. ^'Developing 
'the Missionary Consciousness in the Modern Man," p. 510. 



The Call for a Christian Internationalism 3r 

overflow its banks and today it is washing in upon the: 
outermost nations of the East. Probably few would dis- 
agree with Dr. Robert E. Speer that in the large the- 
impact of the West upon the Eastern nations and upon 
Africa has brought to- those nations a benefit. But that : 
is only because the good that has been carried from the 
shores of the Christian nations has been great enough to 
outweigh a large mass of baneful influences.^ 

The lanes of communication have steadily been growing 
wider and more numerous between the Christian and the 
non-Christian peoples of the earth. These paths of com- 
munication include political conquest and colonization, 
commerce and trade, diplomacy and treaties, international 
laws and agreements, exploration and adventure, world 
travel, industry, science and education, telegraph, cable 
and m.ail service, the periodical press and other literature, 
deputations and commissions, student migrations and a 
host of others. 

It is not possible here to do more than touch on a few 
of the Western contacts that should be Christianized in 
view of the conditions which are likely to develop as a 
result of the War. 

One of these is commerce. The non-Christian world 
has suffered pitifully at the hands of the commerce of 
Christian nations." Think of some of the commodities of 
trade. Though the traffic in slaves is pretty well stamped 
out, memories of the "open sore" remain in Africa. The 
opium curse is almost past in China; thanks not so much 
to Great Britain who introduced and maintained the traffic 



^For excellent treatments of this subject see John R. Mott's 
*'The Present World Situation," Chapters III and IV, President 
Faunce's "Social Aspects of Christian ^Missions," Chapters IV and 
V, and Robert E. Speer's pamphlet "The Impact of the West on 
the East ]\Iust be Christianized." 

-The large advantages which commerce has brought to non- 
Christian peoples and the degree of Christian spirit in which much 
of it has been carried on are not reviewed here, since the present 
purpose is to point out those aspects of commerce which are in 
need of being Christianized. The same qualification applies to in- 
dustry and the other contacts discussed in this chapter. 



32 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

as to China herself who went on her knees to that Chris- 
tian Government and finally got relief in the early part 
of 1917.' But the United States, together with Britain, 
lost no time in pressing on China the cigarette as a 
substitute for opium. The British-American Tobacco 
Company has distributed free millions of cigarettes to 
educate the public taste. Its slogan was and is, "A cigarette 
in the mouth of every man, woman and child in China." 
And Great Britain no sooner washed her hands of the 
opium traffic which she had carried on with China by way 
of India than she began to soil them again by the trade 
in morphine which she has been supplying to China 
through Japan. An immense trade in intoxicants has 
been driven with the non-Christian peoples. In this mat- 
ter the United States has been especially guilty. When 
Mary Slessor went to her pioneer work in the slums of 
Africa she found there only three marks of Western 
civilization, guns and chains and rum. In one recent year 
Christian nations sent three million gallons of rum to 
Southern Nigeria, making up in that single item one 
quarter of the imports of the Colony.^ The same trade 
is being rapidly developed in China and elsewhere in the 
East and in the Pacific Islands. The Japan Times^ fears 
that as prohibition gains in the West there will be no 
restrictions in the exports of wines and spirits to Japan 
and the other parts of Asia. 

Think, too, of the methods employed by the commerce 
of Western civilization with non-Christian peoples. The 
record is a shameful one. Confidence has been abused. 
The ignorance and helplessness of backward peoples have 
been capitalized by the white man. The operations ©f 
large companies and syndicates tend to be dehumanized 
even in domestic commerce; but in commercial dealings 
with remote and unresisting masses of people they have 



^Prior to 1905, twenty-two thousand tons of opium went into 
China annually. Now not an ounce enters legally. 

-In other parts of British Africa this traffic has been reduced 
or abolished. 

^Issue of July 2Sj 1916. 



The Call for a Christian Internationalism 33 

easily run to an accepted policy of merciless exploitation. 
In the enlarged commercial undertakings which after the 
War will link the United States and Canada more closely 
with non-Christian countries and Latin America^ it is of 
vast importance that both in materials and in business 
dealings this commerce should be conducted in a manner 
worthy of Christian nations. 

Industry is another part of the impact that should be 
Christianized. Already an industrial era has set in in 
Asia and Southern Africa. Hankow and Osaka bid fair 
to rival the great industrial centers of the West. And 
wherever industry has gone it has carried not only its 
advantages but its attendant evils as well — child-labor, 
unsafe machinery, overwork, underpay, occupational 
diseases, unsanitary factory and living conditions. The 
atrocities charged against industry in Putamayo in Peru 
and in the Congo country are vivid in our memories and 
are too horrible to recite. They were exceptional, we 
admit ; but greed and exploitation have played a large part 
in the industrial enterprises carried on among backward 
peoples by vigorous and experienced and wealthy Chris- 
tian countries. Those peoples are still being victimized 
by the cupidity of capitalistic interests in Christian na- 
tions ; their labor conditions still am^ount in some cases 
to virtual slavery; they are exposed to the evils of dis- 
possession of their lands, forced labor for private un- 
dertakings and merciless disregard of their rights in a 
hundred ways. 

Competent observers anticipate that after the War the 
industrial development of non-Christian lands will be 
rapid. The shuttles of trade will fly fast and far. Capital 
will flow in from outside sources. Not only will in- 

^Mr. S. G. Inman, in the February, 1918, Men and Missions, 
says: "In the new world war after the present war, the war for 
commercial and cultural supremacy, the battle will rage more in- 
tensely in Latin America than in any other part of the world. 
Every great nation of the earth is now mapping out its campaign 
to win supremacy in these twenty republics of the south which 
are to see the same remarkable development in the twentieth 
century as did our own country in the nineteenth.*' 



34 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

dustrial concerns of the West erect plants in remote places 
in the Orient and Africa, but undreamed of industries 
will develop under native auspices. The Christian lands 
of the West can have a large influence, both by organiza- 
tion and by example, upon the nature of these new in- 
dustrial conditions. In industry, as in trade, international 
operations should be conducted with an eye to mutual 
advantage. A just profit and a benefit conferred should 
be the double aim. This is the irreducible minimum of a 
Christianized industry. 

The press of Christian nations must also be Christian- 
ized. This agency constitutes an influence on the non- 
Christian world of ever growing power and in the years 
that lie ahead its influence will undoubtedly be greater 
still. There are two respects in which this factor of our 
influence as Christian nations should be safeguarded. One 
is that the papers should faithfully mirror the finest spirit 
and ideals of the nation. It is, indeed, the function of 
the press to be in advance of the public in lofty idealism. 
It creates as well as supplies a demand for news. Yet 
how often this leadership is prostituted to the baser ends 
of profit. Many American and Canadian newspapers are 
as able and high-principled as any in the world. But at 
the other extreme are the papers that pander to cheap 
and debased minds which they further cheapen and de- 
base. Their columns are garbage heaps of trash and filth. 
What purports to be news is often an exaggeration or 
distortion of the facts. As an educated citizen of Bangkok 
or Bombay reads such a paper in his home city or as an 
Oriental student reads it in San Francisco or Boston, what 
impression does it give him of American civilization and 
ideals, and indirectly what impression of the religion of 
the land that produced the paper? 

Another respect in which the influence of our press 
should be jealously guarded is in its utterances regarding 
the people and affairs of other lands. Garbled news and 
sensational items are bad enough, but often there is ap- 
parently a deliberate effort on the part of some papers to 
stir up friction between their home country and other 



The Call for a Christian Internationalism 35 

nations.^ Even careless writing may be a very trouble- 
some factor.' The daily and periodical press should be 
a potent influence for maintaining international equi- 
librium and good relations. We have no finer vehicle of 
friendliness towards other nations. 

The foreign policies of Christian nations should be 
Christianized. They should be frank and open and dis- 
interested. Treaties should be scrupulously kept in letter 
and in spirit. Diplomacy should rest on statesmanlike 
principles of fair dealing. Happily this has been pre- 
vailingly true of British and American foreign policies, 
China will never forget that the diplom.acy of the United 
States under John Hay prevented her dismemberment and 
under Theodore Roosevelt returned a large part of the 
Boxer indemnity fund. Those were strokes of Christian 
diplomacy. But can Am.erican diplomxac}^ in regard to 
Colombia and Panama be defended in good conscience? 



lAs an illustration of this we quote from an outrageous editorial 
published on January 5th, 1918, by the New York American (and 
presumably by other Hearst papers) : 

"The war in Europe, hideous as it is, is merely a family quarrel 
compared to the terrible struggle that will some day be fought 
to a finish between the white and the yellow races for the domina- 
tion of the world. 

*'The only battles (of the past) which count are the battles which 
saved white races from subjugation by the yellow races, and the 
only thing of real importance today is the rescue of the white 
races from conditions which make their subjugation of the yellow 
races possible. . . . 

*'Is it not time that the white nations settled their quarrels 
among themselves and made preparations to meet their one real 
danger, the menace to Christianity, to Occidental standards and 
ideals, to the white man's civilization, which the constantly growing 
power and aggression of the yellow race continually and increas- 
ingly threaten?" 

-Dr. Gulick gives as an instance the report in one paper that 
there were 30,000 Japanese in Mexico, a figure which grew to 
"400,000 veteran troops" by the time it was discussed in a leading 
American magazine. A month later that magazine in an article 
by an "authority" gave 250,000 as the latest army estimate of 
Japanese troops in Mexico. Investigation at the Naval College and 
at the Department of War revealed that in reality there were 
then in Mexico fewer than 4,000 Japanese men, women and children. 



36 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

And have the foreign policies of Great Britain been free 
from the spirit of aggrandizement? The most brilliant 
and successful and benevolent colonizing power known to 
history, has she not been known to grasp, consolidate her 
gains and grasp again? "It is a perilous thing," says 
President Wilson, "to determine the foreign policy of a 
nation in the terms of material interest." The opportunity 
that will offer when the War is over for Christian nations 
to illustrate their ideals and adorn their doctrine, to 
practice the Golden Rule and play the Good Samaritan, 
will be unique in history. Both Great Britain, with 
Canada sitting in her councils, and the United States 
will have the chance for a coup d'etat in the Kingdom 
of God that will go far to vindicate the true character 
of their religion. 

The treatment of foreigners who come as strangers 
within our gates is another impact calling for the spirit 
of Christ. Happily much has been done to welcome and 
help these strangers ; but our slate is far from clean. 
Latin Americans, Japanese, East Indians, to say nothing 
of other immigrants, have had just cause for complaint. 
But the Chinese have perhaps suffered the most.^ A 
leading citizen of Japan said recently to Mr. Taft, that if 
the treatment accorded to Chinese in America had been 
experienced by Japanese, his countrymen could not be 
restrained from war. Mr. Taft has cited the cases of fifty 
Chinese who were murdered by American mobs and of 
one hundred and twenty others who have suffered ill- 
treatment and loss of property. Full protection of life 
and property, already guaranteed by the American gov- 
ernment, should be provided in fact. The immigration 
and naturalization laws of Canada and the United States 
should be void of every offense. Travelers from Oriental 
countries, and students from the East now in our in- 



iln "America and the Orient" Dr. Gulick recommends a policy 
in regard to Oriental immigration which will conserve American 
institutions, protect American labor from dangerous economic com- 
petition and promote intelligent and enduring friendliness between 
America and Eastern nations. 



The Call for a Christian Internationalism 37 

stitutions of learning not only should be treated with 
respect and courtesy but should be exposed to the most 
wholesome and truly representative elements in our cor- 
porate life. Scattered throughout the non-Christian na- 
tions are many men and women who have had such an 
experience during their stay in some Christian land. But 
there is a large number of others who have carried back 
another story to their countrymen. We should jealously 
guard this point of influence. It can go far to represent 
to the world the true quality of our religion, for here v/e 
reach other civilizations by the short cut of personality 
and in the classes just named through men of present 
or potential leadership. 

Another line of influence which is powerful through 
the direct and intensive impact of personality is to be 
found in those who go out on a variety of errands from 
Christian lands to lands that are non-Christian. Incal- 
culable harm has come to those nations and a serious 
setback to Christian influence through the unworthy lives 
of many who have travelled or lived among non-Chris- 
tian peoples. We make no sweeping condemnations, for 
many who have gone forth in governmental, business 
and other relationships have been true followers of Christ 
and have thrown their lives into the balance in His favor. 
But from every non-Christian land come tales of traders, 
soldiers and sailors, sportsmen, engineers, dentists, globe- 
trotters, men in the political and consular services and 
others whose lives have been a disgrace to their nations, 
a discredit to Christianity and a hindrance to its develop- 
ment. Unfortunately many of the non-Christians who 
observe them consider that they represent a type of char- 
acter which is standard in their nations and that their lives 
are part of the product of Christianity. Our govern- 
ments should put high character first among the necessary 
qualifications for any appointment to a post in a non- 
Christian country. Business firms should do the same. 
Some concerns already refuse to appoint any but Chris- 
tian men to represent them abroad. Men and women 
who go out on their own initiative, on whatever errand, 



38 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

should not lower their standards when they come into 
non-Christian lands. Rather they should scale them up, 
for now they have a more distinctive and more keenly ob- 
served position as representatives of the religion of Christ 
than when they were at home. They can either exalt Him 
or drag His name in the dust. Since in the years that 
will follow the War the number of men and women in 
whose persons the life of the Christian nations will reach 
across into the non-Christian nations is certain to be 
greatly increased, this line of influence should now be 
more carefully safeguarded than ever. 

There are many other points of contact with the non- 
Christian w^orld which the spirit of Christ should dominate, 
but we do not stop to consider them here. Let us only 
pause to remind ourselves that with each succeeding year 
our whole manner of life in Canada and the United 
States is making a more direct and powerful impact upon 
the nations outside. Now as at no previous time they 
read us like an open book. Through the picked young 
men and women who come over to study in our colleges 
and universities^ and later return to places of large in- 
fluence in their own countries, through the letters written 
home by Orientals who are now domiciled here, through 
the press and other literature, through the reports of 
special commissions and deputations, through moving pic- 
tures and many means besides, they are examining and 
estimating our conduct. The Kingdom of God cannot 
make much headway in those lands unless it makes cor- 
responding gains here. Dr. Speer is right when he says 
that *'it is vain to send out little bands over the world to 
preach the Gospel of purity and peace, love and power, 
if in our social, industrial and racial conditions in Amer- 
ica we are preaching uncleanness, strife, enmity and 
failure." Many a missionary has hung his head in shame 
when after presenting the power of Christ to redeem all 



^In 191 7 there were about 6,000 students from foreign countries 
in American institutions of learning. Of these, 1,400 were from 
China, 1,000 from Japan, 150 from India, 2,000 from Latin America. 
In all, nearly eighty nationalities were represented. 



The Call for a Christian Internationalism 39 

human life he has been controverted by facts regarding 
unredeemed life in his own land, facts which he knew 
were authentic. 

To the Christianizing of this whole impact we West- 
erners should give prayerful and energetic attention, and 
should lose no time about it. There is a demand for 
urgency for five reasons. First, because the Church is 
undoubtedly on the eve of putting forth her greatest mis- 
sionary efforts and cannot afford to be handicapped by 
what is now the most serious obstacle to the spread of 
Christianity through the earth. Second, because the Chris- 
tianizing of the totality of the impact is necessary to 
offset the wrong impressions of Christianity produced by 
the War. Third, because in the years following the War 
the nations, now being shaken together, will be more 
sensitive to the touch of each other upon their lives and 
the points of contact will multiply. For the sake of the 
intensified influence of the West on the East and also 
of the East on the West every contact should be Chris- 
tianized. Fourth, because with the increasing breakdown 
of the old civilizations and religious beliefs the East will 
more than ever be influenced by so-called Christian civiliza- 
tion. Every door and window facing towards the West 
will be thrown wide open. Fifth, because amends should 
be made at once for all the unchristian and anti-Chris- 
tian influences that have marred the impact in preceding 
decades. 

This, then, is the convincing and urgent summons to 
organized Christianity and to every Christian disciple, that 
we should give thoughtful, concentrated attention to the 
Christianizing of all our relationships with other peoples, 
so that the great international arteries of tomorrow will 
be not so much a network of cables or a complexity of 
treaties or a developed system of commercial interchange, 
but pulsating lines of human interest and sympathy and 
service, in the spirit of Jesus Christ. 

III. We Must Actively Spread the Christian Message 
Throughout the World. 

But if the Christianity of the United States and Canada 



40 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

is to be fully vindicated, more is necessary even than 
right psychological and moral attitudes and the Christian- 
izing of the many lines of communication along which 
the life of our nations makes its impact upon the nations 
of the East and Africa and Latin America. The third 
requirement is that we distribute the message and spirit 
of Christianity among all the nations. 

I. It is only the wide dissemination and acceptance of 
the Christian message that will render safe the various 
contacts of which we have been speaking. It already has 
been pointed out that we have been rapidly becoming in- 
ternational in the various aspects of our life. But it is 
to be remembered that it is dangerous to become in- 
ternational in these other relationships if we do not at 
the same time make our religion international. Every 
new contact that is opened up represents a peril to both 
ends of the line. As we reach out with our influence into 
the non-Christian nations, is it safe to teach them to 
read Western literature, for example, and then leave with 
them no Christian literature? They will be abundantly 
supplied with translations of indecent French novels and 
the writings of Paine and Voltaire and Huxley. Is it safe 
to cultivate their intellects, making them efficient instru- 
ments of good or evil to themselves and others, and not 
attach those intellects to the highest uses? Is it safe to 
give them the principles of self-government and a strong 
nationalistic spirit and leave them to run riot among 
themselves and to run amuck among the nations? What 
save those Christian ideals which are the soul of democ- 
racy can render them steady and unselfish in the govern- 
ment of their affairs? Is it safe to go to them with our 
industry with all its attendant difficult problems and leave 
behind the only solution for those problems? Is it safe 
to lift their scale of living and make organized and com- 
plex their social life and tell them nothing of the Chris- 
tian principles that should order and safeguard social 
relations? Is it safe to give them capital and not a Chris- 
tian sense of stewardship? Is it safe to teach their hands 
to war on a scientific and deadly scale and not carry to 






The Call for a Christian Internationalism 41 



them the lessons of the Prince of Peace? Is it safe to 
dig their canals and build their railroads and open their 
mines and develop their agriculture and their industries, 
making them strong in these respects, stronger in some 
cases than ourselves, and not teach them the obligations 
of service that rest upon strength? Is it safe to expose 
them to the worst elements in Western life and isolate 
them from the best? Is it safe even to set before them 
high standards of morality and then leave them to despair 
and defeat because they had not been given a knowledge 
of the living Christ? Apart from the dynamic of the 
Christian Gospel, all our other international contacts will 
bring a net loss to them as individuals and as societies 
and will react ruinously upon ourselves. This is the one 
international communication that we must not fail to 
establish. 

2. Unless the Christian message is carried throughout 
the world, peace among the nations will not become secure. 
For the message of Christ is characteristically a message 
of peace. A multitude of the heavenly host announced 
His coming into the world with a glad cry of "peace" 
and "goodwill." As He went out of the world He left 
peace as His one legacy. "Peace I leave with you." And 
it was the peace not of inward serenity alone but of out- 
ward amity as well. Himself the world's great Peace- 
maker Who broke down the middle wall of partition be- 
tween men and reconciled them all to God, He blessed 
those who would share with Him in the work of recon- 
ciliation. "Blessed are the peacemakers." The first word 
of His great Prayer throws all men into a common- 
family as brothers. His central teaching was God's loving 
Fatherhood. So when He sifted down God's will for men 
He reduced it to a twofold command, the first and great 
one, "Love God," and the second, quite like the first, He 
said, really a part of it, "Love thy neighbor." When later 
he added a new commandment, it simply called for special 
love among His own followers. In loving He laid down 
His life and forevermore the Cross is the sign and pledge 
of peace. Christianity is not only the direct antithesis 



42 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

of war, it is the strongest unifying force in the world. 
In it alone we find the "great positive and wholly ade- 
quate conceptions of peace.*' 

The missionary agent is in His own person a strong 
mediating influence. He proclaims a gospel of lawfulness, 
order and discipline and is a powerful instrument of peace 
within the nation to which he goes. It is sometimes 
charged that the missionary creates discontent and dis- 
order. The charge is wholly false, save in the sense 
that he aims to produce a divine discontent with sin and 
to turn upside down what v/as wrong side up. In that 
sense he is a wonderful disturber. Otherwise he is a 
peace agent. He goes to fierce warlike tribes and leaves 
th^m law-abiding, industrious citizens. He counsels con- 
tentment and obedience to government. He lives not be- 
side but among the people. He knows and loves them. 
He comes not to spend a few years, earn a pension and 
go home, but to make his home with them for life. They 
come to trust him and confide their grievances to him. 
He mediates between them and the governing powers. 
Many a civil war has he prevented. 

And the missionary mediates between his adopted coun- 
try and other countries. He is often called into counsel 
by governments when difficulties threaten, and volumes 
might be written to illustrate his influence in preventing 
friction and possible war. He stands between East and 
West, a trusted interpreter of each to the other. The 
greatest mediating personality that today interprets Japan 
and the United States to each other and helps them 
to clasp hands is no traveler or economist or diplomat, 
but a missionary, Dr. Sidney L. Gulick. And he is but 
a type of a goodly fellowship of missionary mediators. 
Dr. Arthur H. Smith, of China, himself a distinguished 
member of the same group, says that foreign missions 
are ''a sociological force which is unobtrusively but ir- 
resistibly working toward the introduction of a Christian 
climate all over the earth. . . . Christian missions are 
seen today to be the most effective instrument for medi- 
ating between and bringing together fragments of the 



The Call for a Christian Internationalism 43 

human race long isolated, radically diiterent, and too 
often bitterly antagonistic. They are in a unique way 
humanity's clearing-house of ideas and ideals, of motives 
and movements."^ There is much truth in a recent state- 
ment that "the key to world peace is in the hands of 
the missionary." 

The message of Christ proves to be a message of peace 
also in that it furnishes a corrective, guiding influence in 
the development of new democracies. We have already 
seen that the spread of Western civilization produces 
among nations that had been isolated and backward a 
national self-consciousness, patriotic ambitions, aspirations 
toward self-government, a development of latent resources, 
human and material, and an eagerness to appropriate new 
elements of strength from every available source. In 
the process friction points with other nations develop and 
the growing nation is apt to absorb the worst aspects of 
the life and standards of the outside world. If that is 
all, it is soon ripe for trouble with any nation whose in- 
terests cross its own. What was the meaning of the 
"Yellow Peril" talk a few years ago ? Why did Napoleon 
say of China, "Yonder sleeps a giant; let him sleep"? 
Simply this, that if China should grow mighty in the 
manner we have described and without any great moral 
and religious ideas to modify her selfish ambitions and 
point her powers in a better way, that nation, the largest 
in the world and possessed of enormous natural and 
personal resources, might pursue her own schemes of self- 
interest and aggrandizement until she would threaten the 
well-being of the world." The spirit of Jesus, which bids 
a nation to be more concerned to recognize the rights of 
others than to demand its own and to realize its great- 
ness in friendly service, is the only adequate corrective 
of national ambition. The nation that learns to bow the 



^"China and America Today," pp. 235, 22,6. 

-Sir Robert Hart, who knew China better than any other British 
statesman of his time, said, ''China is today the greatest menace 
to the world's peace unless she is Christianized.'' 



44 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

knee to Him in worship and obedience will have no zeal 
for international strife. 

The spreading of the Christian message tends to main- 
tain peace because of its effect upon those who propagate 
it. It is the exalted type of international goodwill. If 
the missionary purpose ran high in the Christian nations 
of the world it would color all their international attitudes 
and undertakings. There would be in each a spirit of 
chivalry toward the weaker nations, of service toward 
the needier nations. There would be in each an attitude 
of partnership and comradeship toward the other nations 
of the Christian faith and a disposition to share its best 
with all mankind. Does this sound idealistic? Neverthe- 
less it is precisely a missionary motive that is needed at 
the heart of Christian nations today, for this is the posi- 
tive aspect of international unselfishness, "We yet shall 
learn," says Dr. Fosdick, "that the best armament of any 
people is the friendship of the world, won by constructive 
goodwill."^ The two broad principles that are contending 
today for supremacy in international relations are self- 
advantage and service. The ultimate expression of the 
one is militarism ; of the other, foreign missions. And 
when the Christians who are filled with a consuming 
missionary passion, a passion to give the best among 
their best, which is the message of Christ, to all mankind, 
shall become numerous enough to determine national 
thought and action, there need be no fear that Christian 
nations will wage war upon the non-Christian nations or 
quarrel seriously among themselves.^ 

3. The disseminating of the Christian doctrine and 
spirit throughout the world is necessary for the further 
reason that only thus can our denials of Christ be offset. 



/^The Challenge of the Present Crisis," p. 94. 

2In The Constructive Quarterly, September, 191 6, Canon C. H. 
Robinson, of England, wrote: "We believe that the best prospect 
of the reconstruction of a good understanding between the peoples 
of Great Britain and Germany lies in an increasing recognition of 
the ideals for the promotion of which British and German mis- 
sionaries stand." 



f 



The Call for a Christian Internationalism 45 



Sadly have we failed as Christian nations to acknowledge 
the Lordship of Jesus Christ before the rest of the world. 
•We have failed in our national life and in our interna- 
tional dealings. Nothing can wipe out the past. There 
is but one thing that can possibly offset it, and that is 
overcoming our own evil with our own good. And we 
have nothing good enough to overcome the evil save the 
message of Jesus Christ. That we can send, a message 
taught and incarnated by chosen and devoted ambassadors, 
a message of redeeming power for individuals and so- 
cieties. Mr. Alorgenthau, a Hebrew, formerly United 
States Ambassador to Turkey, says : "The missionaries 
have the right idea. They go straight to the foundations 
and provide those intellectual, physical, moral and reli- 
gious benefits upon which alone any true civilization can 
be built."^ Dr. Edward T. Devine, Professor of Social 
Economy at Columbia University, carries the story a 
step farther. "The activity of American and other for- 
eign missionaries in Western Asia during the present 
war has been one of the few bright features, evidence 
that even in war the blackest cloud may have a silver 
lining."^ Looking at their work from another angle. Sir 
W. Mackworth Young, K.C.S.L, formerly Lieutenant- 
Governor of the Punjab, said on his return to England: 

As a business man speaking to business men, I am prepared 
to say that the work which has been done by missionary agency 
in India exceeds in importance all that has been done (and much 
has been done) by the British Government in India since its com- 
mencement. Let me take the Province which I know best. I ask 
myself what has been the most potent influence which has been 
working among the people since annexation fifty-four years ago, 
and to that question I feel there is but one answer — Christianity, 
as set forth in the lives and teaching of Christian missionaries. ^ 

It is men and women of that sort that we are to send 
out to represent Christianity, to bring it to bear upon 



^The Missionary Review of the World, January, 1918, p. 14. 
^Columbia Spectator, August 14, 191 7. 

^Quoted in The Missionary Review of the World, January, 1918, 
P- 15. 



46 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

the deepest needs of individual men, and the most baffling 
problems of national life. They are the exponents of the 
most competent agency of international service. 

The answer, then, to the problem of expressing the true 
character of Christianity in our day is the twofold one 
of making Christian our internationalism and making in- 
ternational our Christianity. Jesus Christ will thus be- 
come His own vindication. Let us avoid the fallacy that 
the mere winning of individual converts to the Christian 
message apart from the Christianizing of all human re- 
lationships can bring in the Kingdom of God. And let 
us avoid the other fallacy, which is its corollary, that 
the Kingdom of God will come among men by treaties or 
international organizations or peace programs or any 
other instrumentality apart from the active and definite 
spread of Chrisfs message of the Kingdom. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CALL OF NEW OPPORTUNITIES IN THE MISSION 

FIELDS 

Every day the effects of the World War upon the whole 
life of humanity are becoming more evident. The force 
of the impact between the two armed forces into which 
the world has been divided is seen not so much in the 
way the nations imm.ediately concerned ar^ reeling under 
the shock, as in the way the crash has set the uttermost 
parts of the earth vibrating. The non-Christian lands of 
the earth from end to end have been deeply affected, and 
from the standpoint of their evangelization the effect has 
been one of an enlarged opportunity. 

A few years ago an international Christian leader chal- 
lenged the Church of Christ by writing over the existing 
world situation the phrase, "The Decisive Hour of Chris- 
tian Missions." Surely the words did not exaggerate. 
But these war years seem to have brought us to a decisive 
moment within that hour. We are to consider in this 
chapter some of the factors in the opportunity which 
now summons the Church to throw a new intensity into 
her world task. 

I. Xezv DifUculties that Have been Created. 

First we should frankly face some of the new difficulties 
involved. Nothing is gained by averting our eyes from 
those elements which have recently come into the situa- 
tion, making it one of greater difficulty. More than three- 
fourths of the non-Christian people of the world are either 
participants in the War or victims of it, and the other 
one-fourth are very distinctly affected by it. Immediately 
on the outbreak of the War some of the new problems be- 
gan to appear. Let us now go over these difficulties and 

47 



48 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

try to get clearly before us the nature and seriousness 
of each. 

1. The discrediting of Christianity by reason of the War. 
We saw in the preceding chapter that this is essentially 

a war among nations called Christian, a family quarrel 
within Christendom. Millions of non-Christians are 
amazed at the scope and ferocity of the conflict — dignified, 
progressive nations tearing each other apart, piling the 
battlefields high with dead, and singing hymns of hate 
in a fiendish antiphony. And these were the nations 
which presumably were the flower of Christian civiliza- 
tion. Small wonder that many non-Christian people con- 
trasted all this with the diametrically opposite teaching 
of the missionary that ''the fruit of the Spirit is love, 
joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 
meekness, self-control."' What could they say to the 
Christians but ''Where is now your God?" This difficulty, 
as we shall see later, is not nearly so great as in the days 
just following the outbreak of the War, but it must still 
be reckoned with. 

2. The depletion of the missionary ranks. 

The staff in almost every field has lately been reduced. 
Many missionaries have joined the colors of their coun- 
tries, and some of these have been killed or permanently 
disabled. Many missionaries have been assigned to duty 
w4th military forces. For example, many of the men in 
the Honan mission of the Canadian Presbyterian Church 
have accompanied the thousands of Chinese coolies who 
have gone from that province to serve as laborers behind 
the lines in France. The only means of filling the places 
of these missionaries has been the taking over of their 
duties by other workers, native or foreign, who were 
already overburdened, and in some cases even this has 
not been possible. 

3. The suspension of work in the German missions. 
Almost the entire German missionary force has been 

withdrawn. Prior to the War, this force had included 



^Galatians 5 : 22, 23. 



The Call of Opening Doors 49 

1,227 men and 22,:^ single women, or a total staff, if we 
include wives of missionaries, of more than 2,000 workers. 
Under their care there were 722,349 baptized Christians, 
with a much larger Christian community and scores of 
thousands of inquirers. Most of the German missionary 
work was carried on in British territory or in German 
colonies which early in the War passed into the hands 
of the Allies. Finally, the Allied Governments decided 
that the German missionaries in most of the fields must 
be depofted or interned. This has meant an enormous 
missionary loss, especially in India, where the Germans 
made up about one-sixth of the total missionary force. 
Assistance in many ways has been given by American, 
Canadian, British and other missionaries who have been 
working in the same fields with the German missionaries 
or in adjoining areas. But at best this aid has been 
limited, and much of the former splendid work of the 
German missionaries is now at a standstill. As the crip- 
pled missionary societies of Europe cannot be expected 
to do a great deal, the responsibility to care for this work 
until the German missionaries can return rests largely 
upon the missionary agencies of Xorth America. "This 
is not a question of Germany, it is a question of Chris- 
tianity." 

4. The halting of plans for progress. 

Until the War broke out, almost every mission in Asia, 
Africa and Latin America was preparing for important 
developments. New buildings were to be erected, new 
surveys were to be made, new outstations were to be 
opened, the frontiers of the missions were to be pushed 
back into unoccupied districts, a multitude of new pro- 
grams looking towards efficiency and cooperation were to 
be launched. But the War came and most of these plans 
had to be suspended. The recruits that had been counted 
on could not be sent out. Increases in the budgets of the 
missions were in most cases impossible. Workers were 
detailed for emergency duties. And those who stayed 
at their posts had nev/ drafts made on their attention and 
sympathies and energies. Readjustments had to be made 



50 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

almost daily. The plants were kept running, but while 
some departments were speeded up, other departments 
were slowed down, yet others were temporarily closed, 
and forward policies that had been decided on were for 
the most part filed away for future attention. 

5. Difficulties in the sending of reinforcements. 

The European societies have sent out practically no 
new workers since the beginning of the War. The so- 
cieties of Canada have found it possible to add to their 
missionary force, though not in as large numbers as 
before the War. The American societies were able with- 
out much difficulty to send out new workers to most of 
their fields, until the United States entered the War. Then 
the problems came thick and fast. First the selective draft 
had to be reckoned with. Here the difficulty was acute 
in the case of unordained men between the ages of twenty- 
one and thirty-one. Of these there were 450 already 
under actual appointment by the various Boards, not to 
speak of a large number of missionary candidates. There 
has been trouble, too, in the matter of passports, for in 
view of a wide abuse of such documents the State Depart- 
ment has been obliged to adopt measures of rigid restric- 
tion in the issuance of passports and permits to leave the 
country. European Governments have found it necessary 
also to become much more exacting in the examination 
of all persons, including missionaries, who desire to 
enter their possessions in Asia or Africa. All of this 
has greatly embarrassed the missionary societies of the 
United States in the sending out of new missionaries. 

6. Difficulties in the sending of money and supplies. 
Owing to political restrictions and the deflecting of 

ships from their regular routes, communications have 
been cut off, for at least part of the time since the begin- 
ning of the War, between certain sections of the mission 
field and their supporting constituencies at home. In some 
cases neither money, mail nor supplies could get through. 
Drugs and other conimodities for hospitals, books for the 
schools, condensed milk and other foods necessary to the 
maintenance of health, building materials for repairs and 



The Call of Opening Doors 51 

new structures, supplies for agricultural and industrial 
processes, Bibles, paper for the presses, these and other 
necessities have become scarcer and dearer or else have 
been entirely lacking. The German missions, of course, 
suffered more than others. Although the situation is on 
the whole improved now, there is hardly a field in which 
this difficulty has not been acute and it will not be re- 
moved until the War is over and for many months there- 
after. 

7. The increased cost of missionary work. 

One of two reasons for this is the large advance in 
the price of necessary supplies. The other is the variation 
m the- rates of exchange. Silver currency has risen greatly 
in value. In China, the Mexican dollar has nearly doubled, 
and in Persia the toman has more than doubled. The 
rupee has gone up in India and the yen in Japan.^ 

8. The disrupting effects of the War on missionary work 
in battle areas. 

Actual fighting has taken place in four parts of th€ 
mission world, namely, Persia^ Turkey, Shantung Prov- 
ince, in China^ and the African colonies of Germany — 
Togoland, Kamerun, German Southwest Africa and Ger- 
man Southeast Afri^a.^ Many innocent persons were 
killed. Families were broken up. Houses were plundered 
and burned. Hundreds of natives were taken away as 
carriers. Whole regions were depopulated. In the 
Kamerun one station was seized by the government, the 
printing press of another was turned into a munitions 



^"Some mission boards have had to appeal to their constituencies 
for additional contributions of over half a million dollars merely 
to provide for the depreciation in the silver purchasing power of 
American money. If the price of silver continues to increase, this 
situation will become yet more difficult." — Robert E. Speer, ''Lock- 
ing through the War Clouds." Missionary Review of the World, 
January, 191 8. 

-"Africa is, territorially, more completely involved in the War 
than any other continent. Only one small independent country, 
Abyssinia, is not actively engaged in the War. Even Liberia has 
enlisted in the fight for democracy. Practically every nook and 
corner of far-off, unknown Africa feels the burden of the present 
war." — All the World, January, 1918, p. 16. 



52 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

factory, the treasury of another was requisitioned. For 
eighteen months the war raged throughout that field. In 
Persia, in Armenia and other parts of Turkey not only 
did the Christians suffer the loss of home and property, 
but hundreds of thousands went through the horrors of 
deportation, mutilation and massacre. 

These do not cover all the new difficulties that have 
entered into the" situation. Nor do they take account 
of problems that will have to be faced tomorrow, prob- 
lems of nations being modernized more rapidly than they 
are being Christianized, of growing democracies that 
may be governed by an unworthy spirit, of new influences 
of Western civilization that will have to be counteracted, 
of the administration of missions that will increasingly 
desire self-government, and many other problems that 
even now are giving concern to missionary leaders. Those 
mentioned are sufficient, however, to indicate how disturb- 
ing and disrupting are the difficulties that have already 
been encountered. 

But, after all is said, might not this catalogue of prob- 
lems and handicaps be listed in the credit column? Are 
difficulties and perplexities not to be summed up in the 
Christian mind on the side of opportunity? **Most gladly, 
therefore,'* said the great apostle, "will I rather glory in 
my weaknesses, that the strength of Christ may rest upon 
me."^ May we not see in these difficulties an opportunity 
for the power of God and the spiritual and superhuman 
character of the missionary enterprise to be revealed? 
Ought we not to welcome them as a testing of faith, a 
summons to prayer, a strengthening of moral sinew? 
Should we not regard them as an agency for the upbuild- 
ing of the Church in the mission field and the developing 
of native leadership? It is when they have been chal- 
lenged most sharply by difficulties that Christian missions 
have won their most splendid triumphs. 

II. New Opportunities That Have Been Provided, 

Even if we write in bold letters the word "Opportunity" 

^2 Cor. 12: 9. 



The Call of Opening Doors 53 

across the difficulties that have been listed in the debit 
column, we must begin a fresh page in the ledger for 
the credit item.s, those positive factors produced by the 
War which make the missionary task larger with oppor- 
tunity today. 

In this survey we must resist the temptation to stray 
into the field of conjectures and of future developments, 
however desirable or probable these may be, and keep 
our eye upon those favoring conditions about which there 
is no uncertainty. 

I. The breaking down of conservatism and prejudice. 

Progressive as the nations of the East have become in 
recent years, there has remained a mass of prejudice and 
tradition that has retarded the progress of Christianity. 
Deeply ingrained ideas and long-cherished institutions al- 
ways die hard. But great changes have been begun or 
accelerated during these war years. Many old opinions 
and old customs are gradually being discarded. The caste 
system in India, for example, is now undergoing its great- 
est strain. Three-fourths of the non-Christian population 
of the world are thrown together into the melting pot 
of the War, and most of the Christian peoples of the 
world are there with them. China, India, Japan, Egypt, 
each of the great non-Christian nations is conscious of the 
touch of the other nations in the War. It is a new sort 
of international contact, this grouping of all nationalities 
into those who fight with you and those who fight against 
you, but it is having its effects. 

Here is a man who went out from India as a soldier. 
Never before did his interest outreach his own com- 
munity, and he carried with him a full set of prejudices 
and traditional customs. If he is a caste man, in the 
very crossing of ''the dark water" he broke caste rules. 
At Gallipoli he found himself a brother-in-arms of Aus- 
tralians and French, and in France he has fought side 
by side with British, Senegalese, Canadians and Belgians. 
He is no longer a denizen of a hamlet in South India, 
he is a citizen of the world. He has compatriots under- 
going like experiences in East Africa, in Egypt, in Meso- 



54 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

potamia. What wonderful things they have witnessed and 
experienced since they left India ! And the villagers back 
home turn out to hear their letters that tell of the great 
world outside. The fanciful letters written a few months 
ago by Mr. Kipling for a popular magazine, purporting 
to be from the pen of an Indian soldier, and the com- 
ments of his family on receiving them illustrate this line 
of influence and its upsetting of the old notions and pre- 
judices. It is a hard body blow that the War is dealing 
to many of the institutions and ideas that belong to the 
order that is now passing in India. 

As custom loses its hold on the life of the non-Christian 
nations and as their prejudices and self-sufficiencies fall 
away we can see the door of opportunity swing more 
widely open to the entrance of the Christian message, 

2. The thoughtful and serious mood of non-Christian 
nations. 

Some of these nations, like China, Japan and Siam, 
entered the War of their own free will. Many close 
observers of developments in China say that her participa- 
tion in the War is awakening her to a realization of her 
responsibilities and opportunities. She is appraising the 
moral issues that she has made her own in the struggle 
and inquiring into the ideals on which her own national 
lif€ is resting. Other non-Christian nations, such as India 
and the European colonies of Africa, were dragged into 
the War. They, too, have been looking into the deeper 
meanings of the struggle. Particularly is this true of 
India, where a new seriousness is said to be characteristic 
of Hindus, Moslems and Sikhs. Indeed, as Canon Gould 
has pointed o-ut, "the penetration of the non-Christiar 
world into the realities of the War and their perception 
of the real issues at stake is one of its most impressive 
and unexpected features." 

Democracy is today a more fervent and widespread doc- 
trine among Eastern peoples than it was five years ago, 
And they are considering the far-reaching applications oi 
its spirit. The men from India are fighting in Europe 
for democracy. The question naturally arises, "What 



The Call of Opening Doors 55 

fellowship has democracy with foreign domination, as we 
know it in India?" The agitation for more self-govern- 
ment has, under such leaders as Mrs. Besant, assumed large 
proportions and Britain is preparing to deal generously 
with it. And a further question arises, ''What fellowship 
has democracy with caste?" This question is a religious, 
as well as a social, one, and they must answer it them- 
selves. 

So we find in Asia a serious mood today. Profound 
questions are being asked. There is more plasticity than 
ever before and more openmindedness to the friendly 
counsel of the Christian democracies of the West. 'The 
forces and agencies that prove themselves most vital now 
are the forces and agencies that will be recognized as 
supreme in the period that follows the w^ar."V It is the 
decisive hour for the shaping of the new ideals of the 
East. 

3. Dissatisfaction with the traditional faiths of Asia 
and Africa. 

As thoughtful men of Asia discern the moral issues 
of the War and as they recognize the need of a spiritual 
basis for their new national life, they are finding that 
their traditional faiths fail them. Japan has been called 
'"'a nation prospecting for a religion." Her government 
recently summoned leaders of Shintoism, Buddhism and 
Christianity to a conference with a view to working out 
some satisfactory religious platform for the life of the 
nation. The including of Christianity implied that the 
traditional faiths of the Empire had failed. Shintoism now 
claims to be nothing more than a patriotic cult. And as 
for Buddhism, although there is in som^e quarters a revival 
of its propaganda, the situation was put fairly by Dr. 
J. D. Davis, when, after a life-time of service in Japan, 
he said : "Have it clearly in mind that the issue in Japan 
today is no longer between Christianity and Buddhism, 
but between Christianity and nothing. Japan has already 
turned her back on Buddhism and is now seeking for some 
new basis of faith." 

^Missionary Review of the Warld, December, 191 7, p. ^88. 



56 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

The religions of China have disappointed her. In this 
time which searches into the reahties of reHgion, China 
has turned to Confucianism and Taoism and Buddhism, 
her traditional faiths. But the questions she has brought 
are too many and too modern and too deep for those 
religions. It is true that reactionary movements both 
among Buddhists and Confucianists have set in, for ex- 
ample, in Sze Chuan Province. But it is characteristically 
true in China that old idols are being taken out of the 
shrines and old temples are being torn down or turned 
into school buildings or even places of Christian worship. 
A Christian leader of China, now in the United States, 
said recently, "The heart of the Chinaman is an empty 
shrine." 

"Why cannot Krishna save us?" is a stock question 
asked of Christian missionaries in India. The question 
is now becoming less speculative, more pragmatic, "Why 
doesn't he?" For Krishna and all the other gods in India's 
pantheon and all the subtle metaphysics of Hinduism are 
not saving India. Hinduism, in spite of the new patriotic 
propaganda in its favor, is not equal to the demands of 
the hour. It has no final solution for the problem of 
sin, it is not a character-producing religion, it has no 
gospel of social emancipation. It cannot weld the nu- 
merous races and ironclad social divisions of India into 
one harmonious and compact people. It cannot carry her 
through this crisis of her need. And India, the most 
religious country in the world, is finding that her great 
traditional faith has failed her. 

The devout Mohammedan who is considering deep 
social and religious questions of the modern world is not 
satisfied by his formal observance of prayer periods five 
times a day. When, intent on present-day problems, he 
reads the old Koran, must he not regard it as the book 
of a bygone era? It gives back no answer to the funda- 
mental questions that he brings relating to personal needs 
and social regeneration. Professor D. B. Macdonald, one 
of the most finished scholars in the field of Mohammedan- 
ism, says that "it is for the Christian schools and preachers 



The Call of Opening Doors 57 

to save these peoples, not only for Christianity, but for 
any religion at all." 

Obviously animism is without an answer to the broad 
and profound problems of today. The pagans of Africa 
are renouncing it, as they come into contact with the 
higher religions of Mohammedanism and Christianity. 
Mohammedanism has in recent years been making rapid 
strides in the Dark Continent and has been gaining more 
adherents than Christianity, because Christians have not 
been alive to the opportunity and the danger. 

There is but one light that can dismiss the darkness of 
doubt and misgiving and despair from the religious life 
of the nations today and that is the Light of the World. 
Jesus Christ is the answer to the world's need and the 
solution of all its problems. The nations that long have 
followed other religions have now made room for Him 
and are waiting with their faces turned toward Him. It 
is the day of His great opportunity. 

4. The collapse of Islam's political power. 

God pity their enemies, if the Mohammedans should 
ever unite in a "Holy War" ! So the world thought until 
a few months ago. There was something that froze the 
blood in fear at the very suggestion of the Moslems, to 
whom we were assured religion meant everything, rising 
in full force, 230,000,000 strong, in their fierce, fanatical 
hatred of the Christians and in their cultivated aptitude 
for ferocity, and falling with flashing scimitars upon any 
foe against whom their wrath was stirred. But all this 
fear was wasted. For the test came in November, 1915. 
The Jihad was pronounced. It was strictly according to 
form and regulation. It came from Constantinople, from 
the right source, the Sheik ul Islam, the high priest of 
Islam, and the Sultan of Turkey. It was transmitted in- 
stantly to the faithful throughout the world — the first time 
in history that a universal Holy War had been officially 
declared. The civilized world held its breath and waited 
for the impact. It has waited ever since and will wait 
while the world lasts. There cannot be a Holy War of 
Moslems. Why? Because there is no Pan-Islam. At one 



58 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

time in history there was, when Islam swept through 
North Africa and won the Barbary States and then crossed 
over into Spain, and when at the other end of the Medi- 
terranean it conquered Southeastern Europe and tore its 
way almost to the gates of Vienna, making a vast horse- 
shoe of religious bigotry and political power that threat- 
ened the civilization of Europe and the welfare of the 
world. When this onrush of Mohammedan advance was 
checked by Charles Martel at Tours the first blow was 
given to Pan-Islam. May the present War not prove to 
be the final blow? 

We were wrong if we supposed that religion means 
everything in the world to the Mohammedans. As it 
turns out, political ties are stronger with them than reli- 
gious ties. There was no unanimous response even from 
the Mohammedans of Turkey. Many of them joined in 
the protests that poured in from Persia, from Morocco, 
Algeria and Egypt and from Moslems in Russia. As for 
India, the home of 67,000,000 Mohammedans, there was 
no response save that of solid loyalty to Great Britain. 
The Mohammedan leaders of North India petitioned the 
British Parliament to let Indian Mohammedans go to the 
defence of Egypt. The War has revealed the marvelous 
spectacle, well-nigh unique, of Moslem clashing arms 
against Moslem. The dream of a united political power 
for Islam is shattered forever. To cap the climax, most 
of Arabia has torn itself loose from Turkey, seized the 
holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the sacred places of 
Islam, and set up the independent Kingdom of the Hed- 
jaz, with the Shereef of Mecca in the seat of power. In 
January, 1918, Turkestan followed suit by declaring its 
independence."^ Dr. James L. Barton, of Boston,^ an au- 
thority on the Near East, says : 

The opportunity of the ages confronts the churches of America 
and Europe. The Mohammedans of Turkey, Persia, Syria, Arabia, 
Egypt, all North Africa, India, and, in fact, wherever found, have 
lost much of their power and moral resistance, while their hearts 



^According to a cable dispatch from Stockholm, dated January 
16, 1918. 



The Call of Opening Doors 59 

iave been made sad and tender by the sense of a disappointed hope 
and faith in a religion that has failed them. The door of approach 
to the Mohammedans is beginning to open. Will the church of 
Christ be ready to enter? 

5. The focussing of attention on the essential spirit and 
message of Christianity. 

As we have already observed, the first effect of the 
War on the estimate of Christianity throughout the non- 
Christian world was very unfavorable. It seemed as if 
the ground suddenly dropped from beneath every claim 
that the missionary had made for the validity and suf- 
ficiency of the Christian faith. Soon, however, a reaction 
set in, more careful investigations into the true character 
•of Christianity began to be made, and, although there still 
are and for many years to come will be many non-Chris- 
tians who will quote the War and its root causes in 
Christian nations against the religion which those nations 
have professed, a new appreciation of the faith of Jesus 
Christ is showing itself far and wide throughout the non- 
Christian world. 

Take Japan as a fair illustration. The non-Christian 
Japanese leaders cried out loudly at first that Christianity 
had collapsed in that it had failed to prevent or stop the 
War. ''But gradually the more thoughtful among them 
came to see that it was not Christianity but men and 
human institutions that have failed. Selfishness, inter- 
national jealousy, greed, loss of the idea of brotherhood 
— these are the things that have engulfed us all in un- 
speakable horror. . . . And so there has been growing up 
in interior Japan a greater interest in Christianity, a desire 
to know what Christianity really is."^ 

The discerning minds of China came to a similar con- 
clusion. Throughout China there is a new appreciation 
of the Christianity of Jesus Christ. A professor in a 
large American university was lecturing to his class on 
the causes of the War and began to defend Christianity 
against the charge that it had failed. He was inter- 



^The Japan Evangelist, September, 191 7. 



6o The Call of a World Task in War Time 

rupted by a Chinese student who said, "So far as the 
Chinese students in the university are concerned, you need 
not make a defence of Christianity. We were discussing 
the War at our meeting last evening and we were all 
agreed that the trouble in Europe was due not to too 
much of Christianity but to too little of Christianity." 
Prince Damrong of Siam said recently to some American 
travelers who were passing through his country: "Do not 
fear that we think Christianity is responsible for the war. 
We understand perfectly well that it is not Christianity 
that has failed, but the Western nations, and that if only 
peoples of the West had practiced the precepts of Christ 
there would have been no such awful struggle." 

The non-Christian world in common with the Christian 
world is coming to distinguish sharply between the Chris- 
tian ideal and the spirit and practices of Western Chris- 
tendom. "What Christ came to do, what spirit and mes- 
sage the missionaries bear from Him to the world, is 
clearer to the minds of the non-Christian peoples today 
than it was a year ago."^ Especially among the non-Chris- 
tian peoples fighting with the Allies, there is a clearer 
recognition of the true spirit of Christianity. The longer 
they struggle and the greater sacrifices they make in the 
interest of righteousness, justice, freedom and the rights 
of the weak, the more plainly they see that Jesus Christ 
is' the ultimate Champion of these great issues and the 
more clearly they discern in them His redeeming purpose 
for humanity and for the lives of individual men. The 
more sharply the moral issue is drawn, the more vivid 
the true spirit of Jesus becomes. As the background 
grows blacker, the holy, loving figure of the Christ leaps 
into new splendor before the gaze of the nations. And 
the question "Where is now your God?" is receiving its 
answer. 

6. Influence of the witness of Christian martyrs. 

Viscount Bryce, who was Chairman of the British Gov- 



^Robert E. Speer, '^Looking through the War Clouds," The 
Missionary Review of the World, January, 1918. 



The Call of Opening Doors 6i 

ernment's Commission appointed to examine into the 
treatment of Armenians and Syrians, is as competent an 
authority on that situation as could be quoted. CabHng 
to the American Commission for Armenian and Syrian 
Rehef recently, he referred to the martyrs of the early 
Christian Church who sealed with their blood the testi- 
mony of their faith and added : 

In our own times we have seen this example of fidelity repeated 
in the Turkish Empire and it is strange that the Christians of 
Europe and America should not have been more moved by the 
examples of courage and heroic devotion which the Armenian 
Christians have given. . . . Thousands of Armenian Christian girls 
were sold in the market or distributed among Turkish officers to 
be imprisoned for life in Turkish harems and there forced into 
Mohammedanism. But many more thousands of Armenians, women 
as well as men, were offered their choice between Christ and 
Mohammed and when they refused Mohammed were shot or drowned 
forthwith. For days and days together the bodies of Christian 
women who had thus perished were seen floating down the 
Euphrates. 

In the early Christian era the blood of the martyrs 
proved to be the seed of the Church. So it has been ever 
since. The most recent martyrdoms on a large scale 
were in connection with the Boxer uprising in China in 
1900. There again Christianity thrived on martyrdom. 
One hundred and thirty-five missionaries and 16,000 native 
Christians laid down their lives for Christ rather than 
save them by apostasy. The Church began at once an 
unprecedented advance. In one leading mission, one half 
of whose membership was swept away, the losses were 
made good in three years. Some churches in that time 
doubled their membership. And the advance has gone on 
with amazing rapidity to this day. 

Can it be otherwise in Turkey? What must observing 
Moslems have thought as they saw that threats, tortures 
and atrocities could not shake the faith of the Christians 
who went to their death by thousands with Christian songs 
of praise on their lips? Stand there as a Mohammedan 
persecutor and see that group of Christian students dig- 
ging their own graves to the rhythm of hymns they 



62 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

learned at a Y. M. C. A, conference and comforting each 
other with the promises of God. Stand again a few days 
later and listen to another group of students passing out 
to their death and singing as they go : 

Whither, pilgrims, are you going, 

Going each with staff in hand? 
We are going on a journey, 

Going to a better land. 

How are you going to account for it? Hear them pray 
for you in love, as they ''bow their necks the stroke to 
feel." What strange power is in their faith? Can there 
be a living Presence with them? You cannot rid yourself 
of the conviction that a Moslem could not die like that, 
and that there is something in the faith of those men and 
women which you and your fellow-Mohammedans need. 
Already some reports are coming in that the Moslems have 
been deeply impressed, and that above the blood-soaked 
ground of Islam the green shoots of what may be a 
glorious harvest are beginning to appear. 

7. A new apologetic in recent demonstrations of Chris- 
tian love. 

Amid the gloom and horror of the world's darkest ex- 
perience there has appeared a shining display of mag- 
nanimity and brotherly love. We confine ourselves here 
to three expressions, among many, of the Christian spirit 
of service of which the non-Christian world has been wit- 
ness within the past three or four years. 

One of these is the behavior of British missionaries to- 
wards the missionaries of an enemy nation. When the 
work of the German missionaries in India was imperilled 
by their inability to secure money and supplies, it was the 
missionaries from Great Britain who were foremost in 
coming to their relief. While their fellow-nationals in 
Europe were in deadly combat, these representatives of 
Jesus Christ continued to love and trust each other. 
W^hen the money of the German missionaries was all 
gone and they were in destitution, the British mission- 
aries, out of their own slender incomes and with living 



The Call of Opening Doors 63 

-costs rising steadily, made generous contributions in cash. 
When all Germans were in danger of internment, the 
British missionaries pled with the government, loudly as- 
serting their own confidence in the good faith of the. 
German workers. And when it appeared necessary at last 
that the German missionaries should be deported or in- 
terned, the missionaries from Great Britain undertook to 
do all in their power to oversee the work in the now 
neglected fields and to shepherd the souls there who 
needed Christian instruction and leadership, until their 
German brethren could return. Other bonds broke, but 
the missionary bond held It was a beautiful display 
of the spirit of Jesus and a mighty apologetic for Chris- 
tianity in the presence of a great non-Christian people. 
The same spirit has been shown in Africa, where the 
United Free Church of Scotland has recently taken over 
the work of the Basel Mission. 

The sacrificial ministrations of native Christians have 
been another witness to the power of Christ's loving spirit. 
The children in the schools that were foimded in Africa 
t)y Mary Slessor of Calabar have made real sacrifices 
for the saving of Belgian children. Call to mind the 
conditions of outright savagery that prevailed among these 
people before the timid little mill hand from Dundee car- 
ried to them the transforming spirit of Jesus Christ, and 
the meaning of this sacrifice becomes luminous. Korean 
Christians in California recently made generous gifts for 
Armenian relief. In Southern Nigeria the Ekite Mission, 
although it has suffered severely through the War, con- 
tributed over $125 to the Prince of Wales' Fund. The 
Christian girls in a mission school in Ceylon asked per- 
mission to have dinner omitted from the schedule of the 
day that the money thus saved might go to the Belgian 
Rehef Fund. A colony of 140 Christian lepers in Siam 
set apart a portion of their daily allowance for food in 
order that they might secure money for the relief of 
soldiers made blind in the War. Gifts of this nature have 
been reported from many parts of the non-Christian 
world. 



64 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

From Turkey there come tales of Christians who have 
been showing a spirit of ChristHke charity toward their 
enemies. Not only are some of them announcing their 
intention of devoting their lives when the War is over 
to Christian service in behalf of those who have hated 
them and murdered their families, but even now many 
of them are ready with kindly ministrations in the spirit 
of Christ^ 

In such ways the native Christians of the Levant are 
showing the spirit of Christ as worthily as that band of 
devoted missionaries^ who are staying at their posts 
throughout Turkey, Persia and the Caucasus, in depriva- 
tion and loneliness, letting their very lives drain out in 
sympathy and service, that they may give relief to hun- 
dreds of thousands of destitute, bleeding refugees. The 
sacrifices and ministrations of native Christians in this 
hour of the world's need are an argument for the suf- 
ficiency and adequacy of Christianity that will never be 
controverted while the world stands. 

A third revelation of the Christian spirit of service is 
being made by those who have gone to serve the troops 
of non-Christian lands. From all the great mission areas 
of the world soldiers have streamed to the battlefields 
of Europe, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. And wherever 



^An instance of this has recently been reported. **The Christians 
of the city, including the American mission college students, united 
in a movement to give the Turkish troops a good hot dinner. The 
troops had been obliged to drink only muddy water, but now the 
Christian women brought an abundance of cool, refreshing pure 
water to quench the soldiers' thirst. Imagine the surprise of these 
hungry and thirsty men. "Verily," they said to one another, **this 
is something new; never since the days of the prophet until now 
has such kindness been shown. No Moslem friend has come to 
give us food and drink without money and without price, but 
these Christians have supplied our every need without our asking." 
— The Missionary Review of the World, January, 191 5, p. 3. 

2"The missionaries connected with the Persian and Turkish mis- 
sions alone have distributed over six million dollars' worth of relief 
in the last two years for Armenians, Syrians, Greeks and others, 
thus affording a magnificent demonstration of the quality of the 
religion which they represent." 



The Call of Opening Doors 65 

they have gone, Christ has gone with them, incarnated in 
disciples through whom He has been performing His acts 
of friendly service. 

Great bodies of Chinese have been sent to the Western 
front as laborers at the docks and on the roads behind the 
lines. A large force of missionaries, representing various 
churches, has migrated with them to France as Christian 
helpers extraordinary/ 

Several battalions have gone from South Africa, Zulus, 
Kaffirs and Basutos, and are now serving as a Native 
Labor Contingent at the larger army bases and on the 
lines of communication behind the shelled area in France. 
Along with them there have gone African ministers and 
other experienced missionaries, carefully chosen for their 
close knowledge of African customs and languages and 
for their proven influence with the people. Senegalese 
and other African soldiers are doing active fighting in 
France, and work is planned or is already being done for 
these. 

Whole armies of Indians have left their native land to 
fight for the Empire, a motely array, but excellent fight- 
ing men. Scattered among these is a large force of the 
choicest Y. M. C. A. Secretaries and other missionaries 
from India. "We have nearly a dozen races," writes one 
missionary, "ranging from the restless Afridis of the 
N. W. Frontier to the long-haired Burmese, the noisy 
Hindu and Moslem of historic plains, the aborigines of 
the Indian jungles, the Bengali from the steamy swamps, 
Christianized tribes from Shillong, and the 'head-hunters' 
or weird-looking Nagas from the higher mountains of 
Assam. "^ To this missionary, a Colonel remarked one 
evening after a lantern entertainment, "I can see you love 
these people; just feel at liberty to come into their camp 
and move amongst them whenever you like. The sort 



^The Canadian Presbyterian Mission in Honan, China, referred 
to above, has sent to France nine ministers and laymen and six 
doctors (almost its entire medical staff). 

^The L. M. S. Chronicle, November, 191 7. Art, *T!ndia in 
France," A. W. Macmillan. 



66 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

of thing you have done for them this evening will cheer 
them up wonderfully." 

Look at this swarthy Marathi. He is dictating to a 
young English missionary who is sitting beside him, writ- 
ing page after page of a letter to a far-away Indian 
village. A plan has been worked out whereby that letter 
will be forwarded to a missionary in the neighborhood of 
the soldier's home, and he in turn will take the letter 
and deliver it in person. You see the look of confidence 
and gratitude on the soldier's face. Is he ever going to 
forget that kindness? All through the camps in France 
and Mesopotamia where Indian troops are found, this 
precise service is being rendered. 

Here is a stalwart Sikh. He is homesick and depressed. 
He has had no word from home for months and is longing 
for a glimpse of the old place and of his wife and little 
boys. Suddenly there is a cheery greeting and he looks 
up into the smiling face of an American Association 
Secretary from the Punjab. Soon the story is out. That 
night a letter goes from the Secretary to a missionary 
friend near the Sikh's home. The weeks pass by and 
again the Secretary comes upon the soldier, lonely and 
miserable. He takes from his pocket a snapshot of the 
Sikh's wife and boys, with the home in the background, 
and hands it to the soldier. And the big fellow is not 
ashamed of his tears, as he salaams again and again in 
gratitude. This is not fancy, but blessed fact. 

In an endless variety of ways the hand of Christ is 
being stretched out to these men who have come from 
the ends of the earth. It is all being talked of among 
themselves, in the hospitals and trenches and base camps 
— yes, and among their compatriots in China and India 
and Egypt and pagan Africa as well. The workers in 
the Methodist mission at Pauri, North India, were hardly 
surprised when a soldier who had fought in France came 
to a recent service of the mission. "He had walked 
sixteen miles just to say something to the Christian con- 
gregation. He told them that he had been wounded in 
France, and though he was a poor soldier in a strange 



The Call ,of Opening Doors ' 67 

land, fine ladies nursed him in a way that the women 
of his own family would not have done. Such love and 
devotion as he saw in England convinced him that ours 
is the true religion. His own religion he knew was 
false because it did not produce such love. He wanted 
to learn more about our religion. Numbers of returned 
soldiers, many of them officers, are openly leaning to- 
wards Christianity." When the War is over and the 
non-Christian soldiers will scatter up and down the cities 
and the country places of Asia and Africa, telling of the 
help they received from Christianity but not from their 
own religions, they will be forerunners of the evangel of 
the Son of Man. 

8. The increased vitality of the Church in the mission 
field. 

In the face of disorganization, lack of supplies and the 
loss of leaders, the native churches have been gaining in 
strength. The doctrines of their faith have become new 
and living realities to them. Never has there been more 
of sacrifice, of Bible Study, of prayer, of missionary spirit 
in the Churches in the mission field. 

Look at the West African Mission of the Presbyterian 
Church. Over that field for eighteen months "German 
and Bulu fought French and Fang, British and Senegal." 
"The natural inference," says Dr. A. W. Halsey, "would 
be that with the destruction of property, the ravages com- 
mitted by cruel bloodthirsty soldiers, the removal of large 
numbers of the people and the killing of thousands of 
others, the cause of missions would suffer greatly." But 
one year ^after the Germans had been driven from 
Kamerun and the war clouds had passed over, we find 
one church. grown so large that the missionary found it 
necessary to organize seven new churches. The total 
attendance at these churches on one communion Sunday 
morning was 21,400. That parent church reported 3,000 
as having confessed Christ within the year, of whom 
1,000 had been added to the membership. The same church 
reported that 250 evangelists and Bible readers v/ere in 
training for Christian work and that the church contribu- 



68 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

tions in the past year had doubled. It asked from 
America for the coming year only $950 and planned to 
raise from its own membership the remaining $17,000 that 
would be needed for its various activities. Perhaps no 
other native church can duplicate this record from Elat. 
But throughout the mission world the closer home the 
War has come to the churches and the greater sacrifices 
it has demanded, the more the churches seem to have 
increased in numbers and vitality. The church in the mis- 
sion field will be a purified and more efHcient instrument 
for the spread of the Gospel when the war period will 
come to an end. 

9. Large movements toward Christianity. 

From many parts of the non-Christian world there are 
coming Pentecostal tales of great accessions to the Chris- 
tian Church. The revival movement continues in Chosen,^ 
and according to Bishop Herbert Welch there is an 
average of one convert an hour, day and night. The 
three-year evangelistic campaign in Japan which has over- 
lapped the War has been fruitful beyond expectations and 
gathered such momentum that it could not stop with the 
end of the three-year period. The time is ripe for a great 
ingathering of converts. Never were there so many ear- 
nest students of the Bible. ''Instead of driving them away 
from religion, the War is bringing a distinctly renewed in- 
terest in religion."' In China various revival movements 
among the masses have been in progress and the edu- 
cated classes have been coming by many thousands into 
the churches. Inquirers are pressing up for instruction 
in greater numbers than can be cared for by J;he present 
staff of workers. An evangelistic campaign similar to 
the one in Japan is being launched among . the leading 
cities. In pagan Africa, whole villages and tribes are 
pleading for Christian instruction, tens of thousands of 
converts are being received into the churches, and the 
Bible is being eagerly read. The first missionary to get 

^Mr. Willard Price in the Review of Reviews, June, 191 6, states 
that there are 3,000 new Korean converts every week. 
^The Japan Evangelist, September, 191 7. 



The Call of Opening Doors 69 

back to his post in the warswept section referred to 
above lost no time in sending an urgent cable message to 
his Board in America. He was not asking for money 
or building materials, or even for reinforcements. His 
cablegram read, "Hurry up order for Bulu Gospels." The 
hearts of the missionaries there are breaking because 
they cannot meet the pathetic demands coming out to 
them from the interior for the Christian message. 

In India the remarkable mass movement gains steadily. 
Whole villages and tribes keep pressing up for Christian 
instruction with a view to baptism. In one year the mis- 
sionaries of the Methodist Episcopal Church alone were 
obliged to turn away 153,000 who wished to become 
Christians, because there were no workers to instruct and 
lead them. One church reports a waiting list of 1,000. 
The Bishop of Madras says that fifty million outcastes 
are knocking at the doors of the Christian Church in 
India. Naturally there are many signs of alarm among 
the religious leaders of Hinduism over these im.mense 
ingatherings. 

Even in Mohammedan lands there is such an eager- 
ness to understand the Christian truth as should shame us 
for our little faith. The Christian schools that are still 
open are crowded beyond capacity by Moslem children. 
In Egypt copies of the Scriptures and religious tracts are 
being bought and eagerly read by Mohammedans and a 
spirit of inquiry is spreading even among Sheikhs and 
religious teachers. The oldest missionaries know of noth- 
ing like it. One missionary writes : "In days gone by we 
sought to gain a hearing and were refused. Now it is 
as if the Aloslem himself were seizing the missionary by 
the coat, saying, 'What was it you used to want to tell 
us?"' 

It is doubtless true that more converts have been received 
into the Church in the mission fields and more inquirers 
have come for Christian instruction and greater masses 
of non-Christians have been moving towards Christ in 
the years since the War began than in any corresponding 
period in the modern history of missions. 



yo The Call of a World Task in War Time 

In Latin America as well as in the non-Christian coun- 
tries there is a new spirit of religious inquiry. Mr. S. 
G. Inman, the Executive Secretary of the Committee on 
Cooperation in Latin America, on returning from his 
tour of Latin American countries during 1917, reported 
that the shock of the World War has occasioned much 
deep religious thinking and that from university pro- 
fessors to laboring men there is evidenced a spiritual 
longing and a new openness of miad towards evangelical 
Christianity. This brings to the evangelical Christians of 
the United States a peculiar opportunity, since the former 
Latin American attitude of distrust and dislike towards 
their northern neighbor has now turned to one of friend- 
liness and confidence. 

By these many voices of opportunity that are beyond 
all precedent, God is sounding out His call to a mighty 
advance on all fronts throughout the mission world. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CALL OF THE WORLD's PRESENT NEED 

In the first three chapters our attention has been upon 
the demands which the present world situation is making 
for a new expression of international Christianity. In the 
three chapters that follow we are to consider the response 
which Christianity must now make if these demands are 
to be fully met. The first response must be by way of a 
sympathetic appreciation of the present actual human need. 

I. The Sympathies of the Christian World Have Never 
Been so Responsive to the Sufferings of Humanity, 

One of the glorious revelations of the War has been 
the capacity of the human heart for sympathy, especially 
the heart that has been influenced by the touch of Christ 
upon it. We have read of death and disaster and anguish 
till our hearts have grown sick within us. How often 
as we read detail upon detail of gruesome horror till 
the very pages seemed to be printed in crimson, we have 
had to lay aside our reading, because we could not stand, 
more. The strain was too great. And in the night, brood- 
ing over some harrowing thing we had heard or read, 
and reflecting that this was but a type of the whole vast 
agony of "nations stretched upon a cross," we have had 
to put a violent curb on our imagining le'st our reason 
should leave us. For most of us this did not mean a 
merely morbid interest in widespread suffering. It meant 
that the finest thing within us, our sympathy, had been 
cut to the quick. True, there have been some whose in- 
terest has been largely morbidness, there have been some 
callous, self-centered hearts that have not suffered in the 
suffering of the world, there have been some unimagina- 

71 



y2 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

tive minds that have felt no hurt. Most of us, too, now 
find less of shock in tales of fresh miseries, for we have 
had so much of it that our minds are getting stupefied 
and our sensibilities benumbed. And we do not stop 
to individualize in our thinking as we did at first, there 
is so much suffering in the mass. But, making all reser- 
vations, it is still true that the Christian world is today- 
sympathizing as it never sympathized before. It is learn- 
ing a new experience not only of a fellowship in joy but 
yet more of a fellowship in suffering. 

And well it may. For never did the pall of tragedy 
hang so heavy or so low over the whole of human life. 
If it were a case of outraged, bleeding Belgium alone 
there would be misery enough to make^these years memor- 
able in human history. But others of the smaller nations 
have been suffering as much. Think of Servia, hungry and 
plague smitten, her men carried off, her women and chil- 
dren left in anxiety and want. Think of Armenia, struck 
down by a crime as dark as was ever written into his- 
tory, her people all but wiped out and the remnant left 
in wretchedness. And there is Roumania. Pitiful tales 
have been coming from Roumania in recent months, tales 
of broken homes, and of suffering and privations, espe- 
cially among the women, the aged, and the very young. 
And Poland. "Put all the sufferings of Armenia, of 
Belgium and of Servia together," says Dr. Mott, "and 
in my judgment they would be engulfed by the sufferings 
of Poland and the related regions." We might name, 
too, Turkey and Persia, Montenegro and Lithuania and 
other small nations afflicted and brought low because of 
the War. And upon the stronger nations, as well, the 
stroke has falfen heavily. Eight million graves could tell 
how heavily. The hospitals and the prison camps throw 
their toll of misery into the cup of gall and wormwood 
which this generation is drinking. The evil of the hour 
is felt in quivering flesh. And, as a speaker just back 
from visiting many of the stricken countries said a few 
days ago, "There is not only the physical suffering of 
the wounded and diseased, but there is that dull, unceasing 



The Call of the World's Present Need 73 

pain ever present in the consciousness of mothers, wives, 
sisters and Httle children." The shadows are lengthening 
across the face of the nations, and there is darkness in 
the homes of the world. No wonder there is today a 
climactic outburst of human sympathy, for there never 
were so many hearts that held a fellow-feeling of pain 
and never so much of woe standing close about each life 
and out beyond each life, as far as knowledge can reach. 

Sympathy is crystallizing into deeds of mercy. Women 
are knitting, making comfort bags and rolling bandages, 
men are leaving their business to drive motor ambulances, 
actors and public speakers are contributing their talent 
in the training camps and even within sound of the guns, 
women of wealth and social rank are serving in canteens, 
men at the head of large institutions are over in France 
working with the Y. M. C. A., college women are rallying 
to the Red Cross, college men are doing service of a 
hundred kinds in cantonments and in the trenches. There 
is no leisured class in England. Canada has almost for- 
gotten gaiety. The United States is beginning to lose her 
zest for frivolity. 

Money, as well as time, is being poured forth at the 
call of sympathy. In Canada, in Great Britain, in France, 
in Australia and other countries there seems to be no 
limit to the public's capacity for giving. Fund after 
fund issues its special appeal every year and sometimes 
twice or more in a year. What would have been thought 
a fabulous sum in former days is set as a goal in each 
campaign, and seldom does the amount fail of oversub- 
scription. For the springs of liberality that before sent 
out trickling streams are now pouring out torrents of 
supply for those who are suffering from the War. The 
United States is likely to prove worthy of a place beside 
these other nations. Last year, according to a computation 
which Dr. Mott has made, $330,000,000 was contributed 
for philanthropic objects connected with the War.^ That 



^Not including denominational gifts for war purposes nor amounts 
contributed for Armenian and Syrian Relief. 



74 T^he Call of a World Task in War Time 

amount does not seem proportionately very large con- 
sidered as but $3.30 per capita, but it was ten times as 
much as the United States had ever given before in 
any one year for similar purposes. College men and 
women are this winter giving to the Students' Friendship 
War Fund in amounts that register generosity and often 
a real sacrifice. There are many instances of students giv- 
ing up a trip, a home Christmas, a set of furs, an over- 
coat, a pet indulgence, in order to make good a liberal 
subscription to the Fund. 

Hiding her own sorrow, Canada has looked about for 
the greatest needs to which she might direct her gen- 
erosity. The United States has shown equal discrimina- 
tion and ingenuity in locating the urgent necessities of the 
hour at home and abroad. Neither ^nation wishes to Leave 
unmet any conditions produced by the War which demand 
relief.^ 

It is an eloquent list. But for the United States it is 
only a beginning. As the iron enters more deeply into 
her own soul she will have a yet more tender heart for 
the sufferings of others. The horizon of her sympathies 
will widen. Her comradeship in disaster with a score of 
other nations will develop a keener conscience for the 
relief of their needs. 

A large part of the money raised has been sent over- 



^The range covered by the ninety-two war relief organizations 
which, according to the National Service Handbook, existed in the 
United States in 191 7,* can be seen from the titles of a very few 
of them: American Aid for Homeless Belgian Children; American 
Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief; American Fund for 
French Wounded; Blue Cross Fund for Wounded Horses; Bul- 
garian Relief Committee; Committee for Relief of Jews Suffering 
through the War; General Italian Relief Committee; Irish Relief 
Fund; Montenegrin Relief Association of America; Permanent Blind 
War Relief Fund; Polish Victims Relief Fund; Roumanian Relief 
Committee; Secours National Fund for Relief of Civilian War 
Sufferers in France; Russian War Relief Committee; Serbian Relief 
Committee; Siberian Regiments American Ambulance Society; 
Ukrainian War Relief Fund; Vacation War Relief Committee; 
Zionist Medical Unit, not to speak of many similar undertakings 
and the efforts made by various churches as such. 



The Call of the World's Present Need 75 

seas. This is the most significant part of the story. For 
neither Canada nor the United States in previous years 
had been very alert to discover and respond to the needs 
that lay beyond their own borders. How slow they have 
been to give for the relief of needs that are remotely 
located from them, has often been demonstrated in recent 
years. We think of the United States and Canada together 
in this connection, for they are more than neighbors ; 
their nervous system is one. When San Francisco was 
desolated by an earthquake, there was a rush of sympathy 
on both sides of the line to relieve the distress. But when 
Guatemala City was well-nigh destroyed by an earthquake 
on December 30, 1917, resulting in 2,500 casualties and 
125,000 made homeless, the affair was barely mentioned 
among us, and little was done by the American or 
Canadian public to lessen the suffering. 

On December 6, 1917, a Belgian relief ship rammed a 
French munition ship in Halifax harbor. The resulting 
explosion laid a large part of the city in ruins. The loss 
of life reached the appalling total of between 1,200 and 
1,500. Many were injured, including 300 children who 
were blinded by flying shrapnel. Fire and blizzard added 
to the suffering. The news of the tragedy was flashed 
over the wires, and from all over the continent there were 
flashed back messages of sympathy and promises of help. 
Funds were opened in every city of consequence. Ships 
and trains were rushed to the spot with supplies. It was 
a magnificent display of largeheartedness. About two 
months before, on the night of September 30th, a typhoon 
_struck the shores of Japan costing 1,619 lives and de- 
stroying property worth several million yen. The total 
casualties amounted to 2,500. In Tokyo alone more than 
100,000 homes were flooded. It was a more awful disaster 
by far than the one at Halifax. Yet few, if any, funds 
were opened in North America to send relief to the 
Japanese sufferers. They were too far removed from our 
own homes. 

But happily, in the light of other indications, the lesson 
is being learned ''that it is competent for a nation to give 



76 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

money away to other nations." This augurs well for the 
future. For it represents the most unselfish form of a 
nation's benevolence. It is the missionary type of giving. 

The value of this generous uprising of practical sym- 
pathy is greatly out of proportion to the immediate relief 
afforded. It is reacting upon our own life in the enrich- 
ment of character. It is developing an unselfish concern 
for other lives, even for those that are set down far from 
our own. It is creating, at least temporarily, the habit of 
giving in behalf of others whom we have never seen, who 
are across the world from us, and whose only claim upon 
us is their own distress. And it is a tangible expression 
of international obligation, an evidence that we are 
gradually coming to recognize the oneness of humanity, 
and that, however removed we may be by distance or any 
other form of separation from a people, the moment they 
fall in need we are ready to treat them as our neighbors. 
It is the Good Samaritan practice, elevated to international 
terms. 

But what will happen to these widely awakened sym- 
pathies when the clouds of war have passed over and the 
sun breaks out again upon the world? It cannot be long 
until the sufferings caused by the War begin to diminish 
and the wrongs that immediately caused it are mitigated 
or removed. Shall these splendid sympathies, capable of 
sustained sacrifice and of an international outreach, be- 
come dormant again? Shall they call in their farther 
horizons and limit their ministrations? To lose this one 
among the few finest products of the War that has taken 
away so much from us would be a tragedy indeed. Canon 
S. Gould, of Toronto, says : *'By the war, capacities in 
danger of inundation by prosperity have been rescued; 
moral fibers attached by the rot of indulgence have been 
retempered; splendid qualities of sacrifice and service 
have been aroused and exhibited on an unparalleled scale. 
All these gains, and others, must be sustained and per- 
fected by some great implementing factor, whose root has 
no connection with human frailty or passion." 

Where are we to look for this ^'implementing factor"? 



The Call of the World's Present Need 77 

Are we able to find wrong and sadness and distress in the 
wide world vast enough to bid for the full measure of 
that sympathy which is now going out to the sufferings 
caused by the War? The sorrowful fact is that out 
through the non-Christian nations before ever the War 
began, there was more of tragedy, more of horror and 
misery than the War has brought into the world. It was 
so ten and twenty and fifty years before that; it is so 
today, and yet, God help us, we have not realized it up 
to this time. It is only a half justification to say that we 
did not know, for the facts have been abundantly and 
graphically laid before us and we have had every right to 
know. But let us not waste time in recrimination of our- 
selves. Let us repent and set ourselves to good works 
in a fashion to atone for past neglects. After the War 
we shall find much to do for war-swept nations across the 
water that will have to be rehabilitated. But the only 
equivalent that we shall find for the destitution and agony 
and despair caused by the War is the overwhelming mass 
of human need throughout the non-Christian world. Does 
this sound like over-statement? Can it be that through 
all these years the greater part of the earth's population 
has been in so desperate a plight? Let us take a rapid 
glance across the needs of the less favored nations of the 
world. 

II. The Greatest Appeal for Sympathy Comes from the 
Need of the N on-Christian Nations, 

As we consider the needs of the non-Christian nations 
let us rid our minds of every condescension, every false 
sense of superiority. Essentially, potentially, the West 
cannot claim superiority to the East. The liberating prin- 
ciples of Christianity came first to the Western nations, 
and they got a few centuries' start of their sister nations 
of the East. But the lead is being rapidly cut down since 
the ideals and methods of Western progress have been 
adopted by the Orient. They learn rapidly yonder and 
they are not servile imitators by any means. They have 
still much to learn from the West and the West is due 



y8 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

to learn a great deal from the East. Education has come 
to but a small minority of the Eastern populations, aside 
from Japan, but from among the educated group there 
have arisen finished scholars, keen financiers, astute states- 
men, brilliant men of letters and of science, towering 
personalities in all departments of human leadership. Most 
of the basic elements of strength in Western peoples are 
possessed in common by those of India, China and Japan. 
And there are racial qualities in each of those peoples 
that Anglo-Saxons may well covet. There are great foun- 
dations to build upon. The closest students of the African 
peoples, not only in the North but in Central and South- 
ern Africa, never tire in reminding us of the large capaci- 
ties which are yet imdeveloped in them, but which will 
one day come into evidence. And when we turn from 
non-Christian mission lands to those of Latin America, 
we come at once upon latent human resources that in many 
men have flowered into ripe culture, high leadership and 
mighty achievement. Into the Church of Jesus Christ 
every one of these peoples will yet bring its own rich and 
needed contribution. As we survey the needs of these 
nations, therefore, let us do so on a basis of essential 
equality and with a just and grateful recognition of the 
possibilities, immense and distinctive, that inhere in each 
of them. 

First, let us remember that some of the most acute 
suffering caused by the War has been in mission lands. 
It is as painful for a Senegalese to be gassed as for a 
Frenchman. A blinded Turk is as pathetic a figure as a 
blinded Scotchman, and his family will sufifer as much 
as the family of the other. A Fijian orphan is as much 
to be pitied as a Canadian orphan, and the widow of a 
Sikh as the widow of an American. Some of the mission 
countries, as has been pointed out already, are or have 
been battle areas. In Turkey proper, destitution and 
disease are Vv^idespread. Persia has been overrun and her 
sufferings are acute. In four parts of pagan Africa war 
raged furiously and wrought its devastations. Homes 
were broken up, families separated, villages destroyed. 



The Call of the World's Present Need 79 

Also in all of these countries living costs have become 
painfully high. 

But Western Asia has suffered the most. Harrowing 
and numerous as are the tales of suffering among Arme- 
nians, Syrians and Greeks, only a small part of the 
terror, the agony and distress has yet been recorded. 
Deportation has been wholesale. Arnold J. Toynbee says 
that "only a third of the two million Armenians in Turkey 
have survived, and that at the price of apostatising to 
Islam or else of leaving all they had and fleeing across 
the frontier. The refugees saw their women and children 
die by the roadside, and apostasy, too^ for a woman, in- 
volved the living death of marriage to a .Turk and in- 
clusion in his harem. The other two-thirds were *de- 
ported' — that is, they were marched away from their 
homes in gangs, with no food or clothing for the journey, 
in fierce heat and bitter cold, hundreds of miles over 
rough mountain roads. Parched with . thirst, they were 
kept away from the water with bayonets. In lonely places 
the guards and robbers fell upon them and murdered 
them in batches — some at the first halting place after the 
start, others after they had endured weeks of this agoniz- 
ing journey. About half the deportees — and there were at 
least 1,200,000 of them in all — perished thus on their jour- 
ney, and the other half have been dying lingering deaths 
ever since at their journey's end." 

Many instances of the terrible torture inflicted on these 
imfortunate people are related in the Bryce report, such 
as the following, vouched for by a German eye-witness : 
*'Every officer boasted of the number he had personally 
massacred. In Harpout the people have had to endure 
terrible tortures. They have had their ^eyebrows plucked 
out, their breasts cut off, their nails torn off. Their 
torturers hew off their feet or else hammer nails into 
them just as they do in shoeing horses. When they die, 
the soldiers cry: 'Now let your Christ help you.'" 

In the past two years not less than one million Arme- 
nians and Syrians in Turkey have perished as a result 
of massacre, deportation, exposure, starvation and disease. 



8o The Call of a World Task in War Time 

For the most part massacre and deportation have ceased, 
but from the other causes named, deaths continue to 
muhiply. *'A hard task is assigned the missionaries, that 
of practically signing the death sentence of children. For 
example, in one case, there were 430 children with funds 
sufficient for only sevent3^ The missionaries were forced 
to select the seventy and say no to the equally or pos- 
sibly more destitute 360." In the Lebanon district alone 
it was reported recently that sufferers were dying at the 
rate of 1,000 a day. "Little children scarcely able to feed 
themselves live absolutely alone in deserted homes." In 
all, over two million Armenians and Syrians are homeless 
and destitute and of this number some 400,000 are orphans. 
Talk about rehabilitation ! For a long period after the 
War is over these heroic sufferers will be struggling to 
mend their bodies, restore their homes, and build up the 
w^aste places of their country. Western Christians will 
find there a rare opportunity to fulfil the law of Christ 
by bearing their burdens. 

These are needs occasioned by the War. But there are 
other needs that are perennial and normal in the non-Chris- 
tian nations. Let us glance swiftly at some of these 
needs. 

I. Poverty is one of them. Every non-Christian land is 
poor. A day laborer in India when work is to be had 
receives less than ten cents a day and the average yearly 
income per capita in the whole of India is under ten dol- 
lars. In China the unskilled laborer earns from ten to 
twenty cents per day. The average daily earnings of the 
Latin American peon amount to eighteen cents. The causes 
of v/idespread poverty in non-Christian lands vary some- 
what in different^ countries. They include poor agri- 
cultural methods (while the populations depend mainly on 
agriculture), priestcraft, improvidence and the prevalence 
of debt, caste, overcrowding, lack of industries, exploita- 
tion, land tenure^ and hoarding. Famines, unknown in 



^In Latin America five per cent of the people own ninety-five 
per cent of the land. 



The Call of the World's Present Need 8i 

Christian lands, are common in non-Christian lands. It 
is safe to say that there is famine in some part of Asia 
all the time. Five millions perished in India during the 
famine of 1900. 

The non-Christian world is hungry. We have been 
solicitous for the hungry in Belgium and Poland during 
the present emergency. But more people have been suf- 
fering from the pangs of hunger in India than in Belgium 
and Poland combined. This has not been due to war 
conditions, but has been going on for ages. Why have 
we not been solicitous about them? It is estimated that 
in Asia and Africa more than 200,000,000 always go to 
bed with hunger unsatisfied. We rightly pity the un- 
sheltered refugees from Armenia and Poland, but have 
we the same pity for the 100,000,000 who, according to 
Bishop Thoburn, sleep without shelter every night in 
China, India and Africa? The mission lands of the world 
are bitterly poor. Their foundations of sound economics 
have yet to be laid. 

2. The non-Christian lands are physically afflicted. They 
are disease-smitten countries. They have all the diseases 
that are common among us and many that rarely or never 
are to be found in the Western lands of Christendom. 
Epidemics are the rule, and often they run their course 
unchecked. Cholera, tuberculosis, sleeping sickness, 
plague, smallpox, measles, yellow fever and malaria take 
their terrible toll in millions every year. In-^Africa, in 
India, in China and great sections of Latin America there 
is almost no knowledge of sanitation or hygiene. Im- 
morality spreads its pitiful suffering and scars across the 
non-Christian world. Accidents and resulting infection 
are more common than with us. Native quackery and 
superstition add to the horror. In China and elsewhere 
filthy needles are plunged into the joints or the abdomen 
to release the evil spirits, which perchance are rheumatism 
and acute indigestion. It is the women and little children 
who suffer most. Taking into account undernourishment, 
harmful diet, overcrowding, child marriages, the inherited 
results of immorality, the drinking of foul water and many 



82 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

other causes, need we wonder that none but the very- 
strong infants survive? And the women, how tragic is 
their suffering in every land where Christ has not come! 
Our hearts are very tender towards the physical agony 
caused by the wounds of battle and the diseases from 
which the troops are suffering. Should they be less 
tender towards this vast suffering which is chronic in the 
non-Christian v/orld? 

What makes the matter so serious is that there is little 
relief at hand. The swarming tribes of Africa have access 
to very few doctors or nurses. In China great areas can 
boast of but one physician to every three million people. 
In the medical profession there, an exclusive field of one 
million is quite a usual thing. In India, where nine-tenths 
of the people live in villages, Dr. W, J. Wanless estimates 
that "ninety out of every hundred who die in the smaller 
villages die unattended by a qualified, or even partially 
qualified physician," When we hear the clang of the 
ambulance gong, when we look at the brass plate by our 
doctor's door, when we see the colored lights of the drug 
store window, and think of all the relief that these 
represent, should we not feel a stab of pity for the mil- 
lions upon millions to whom hospitals and ambulances, 
doctors and dispensaries are total strangers? Our sol- 
diers suffer in spite of am^bulance corps, doctors, Red 
Cross nurses and every facility for comfort The greater 
physical suffering of the non-Christian world is for the 
most part unrelieved. 

Here is a blind soldier back from the War. Our hearts 
go out to him. But over there, there are millions^ of 
blind, many of whom could be easily cured, and there are 



^Mr. W. C. B. Purser says regarding the 440,000 blind and the 
200,000 deaf-mutes in India, **In several provinces of India these 
two classes of unfortunates are wholly untouched, while in the 
othef provinces they are quite inadequately provided for by Chris- 
tian missionary agencies." ("India's Infirmities." The East and 
the West, July, 191 7, p. 298.) Only about 300 blind are receiving 
instruction in the mission schools of India. Similar conditions pre- 
vail in other non-Christian countries. 



The Call of the World's Present Need 83 

few to pity or mitigate their distress. Here is a soldier 
who has lost his hand or his foot in action. We honor 
him and we pity him and we help him, if we can. But 
over yonder in a bazaar street sits a leper with both 
hands and both feet rotted away, dying literally by inches. 
Why are we not as ready to hear a call for pity and help 
in his behalf? According to the 191 1 Census Report there 
are 109,000 lepers in India. Apart from the 5,000 whom 
Christian missionaries have been able to gather into 
asylums, this pathetic group is almost totally uncared for. 
The same is true of the lepers of Japan and China, not 
to speak of Siam, Central Asia and other non-Christian 
lands. Almost nothing is being done for their relief, nor 
for the hundreds of thousands of insane and deaf-mutes 
in mission countries. 

The touch of Western civilization is adding its growing 
quota each year to the physical misery of these lands. It 
spreads the hideous diseases of immorality. Multitudes 
of men from Western lands, having left moral restraints 
behind them, have scattered their vices among non-Chris- 
tian peoples. Mr. Kipling describes their attitude bluntly: 

Ship me somewhere East of Suez, 

Where the best is like the worst, 
Where there ain't no Ten Commandments, 

And a man can raise a thirst. 

And the same is true South of Suez. But south and 
east, the inexorable law of God's righteousness is at work. 
Along the highways of communication with the non-Chris- 
tian world and back into the interior there is to be found 
the physical wastage, Anglo-Saxon, Oriental, African, that 
has followed the defiance of the moral law. 

Modern industry is bringing along its accidents, its over- 
work and underpay, its unsanitary factories and crowded 
living quarters, its child labor and its occupational diseases 
and is intensifying the physical suffering of the non-Chris- 
tian world. We are becoming more and more concerned 
over the physical effects of industry in our own nations. 
But is tuberculosis less serious for a girl in a Tokyo silk 



84 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

miir than in a sweat-shop in New York? Is it any more 
right that a child of ten should do a hard day's work or 
a hard night's work at a loom in Shanghai than in a cot- 
ton mill in Alabama? Are the morals of a factory in 
Canton, Ohio, a more precious consideration than the 
morals of a factory in Canton, China? Shall we have 
"safety first" in Canadian industries and safety last in 
the industries of Africa? 

3. Naturally, where there is so much of deadly disease, 
so little of sanitation and hygiene, and so few agencies 
of relief, the death rate is appalling, "In most Oriental 
towns the death rate is estimated at over 45 per 1,000 
... in Bombay the infant death rate was 593 per 1,000."^ 
Infant mortality in the large cities of Latin America is 
very high. In Santiago, for example, four-fifths of the 
children die before they are five years of age. Prevent- 
able disease brings a St. Bartholomew's Eve to the chil- 
dren of mission lands every day. The deaths from 
preventable causes in India are said to total 5,000,000 every 
year, or more than the number of soldiers who were 
killed in action or died from wounds and disease in the 
first two years of the War. More people are said to die 
as a result of witchcraft in Africa every year^ than were 
killed in all the armies during the first year of the War. 
If the War should end within a year, the number of lives 
lost as its direct result will be much smaller than the 
number of deaths from preventable causes in non-Chris- 
tian lands in any year. Add to these the unpreventable 
deaths and we have a total of 33,000,000 who die each year 
without a knowledge of Christ. 

4. The non-Christian world neglects its childhood. "In 
nothing does Christianity shine more resplendent by con- 



^Dr. Sidney Gulick says that ^'Government statistics show that 
out of every one hundred girls to enter upon factory work in 
Japan, twenty-three die within one year of their return to their 
homes, and of these fifty per cent die of tuberculosis." 

2Elma K. Paget, "The Claim of Suffering," p. 34. 

^See article by George Heber Jones in World Outlook, March, 
I9i5» p. 9. 



The Call of the World's Present Need 85 

trast," says Professor Alva W. Taylor, "than in its treat- 
ment of children, and in its claims of natural right for 
them. . . . The only relief for the child life of heathen- 
ism is the new valuation of life which Christianity brings."^ 
To anyone who has admired the beauty and brightness 
and winsomeness of the children of mission lands, the 
hideous crimes that are committed against childhood in 
those countries seem incredible. But people who have 
lived among them know that these evil things are only 
too true. Many children do not live who ought to live. 
Infanticide is one of the horrors of the non-Christian 
world.^ The days of the Juggernaut are passed and sel- 
dom is a girl child thrown into the Ganges, for the British 
law has forbidden these evils. But of the children in 
India the majority of boys is large, which cannot mean 
less than that they are better safeguarded and nourished 
in infancy than are the infants who are unfortunate enough 
to be girls. In China girl babies are sometimes killed, 
although under the new regime this is illegal. In Africa 
some of the tribes kill all twin babies, and most tribes do 
away with all infants that are deformed. In at least one 
tribe every first-born child that is a girl is thrown into 
the woods to die. We have already referred to the neglect 
and ignorance in the care of infants and the evils of 
native malpractice that result in an appalling fatality. The 
wonder is that so many survive. 

In the early childhood of those who do survive there 
is for most of them a good deal of happiness, and they 
are really loved in their homes. But their lot is far from 
enviable and they, the girls especially, are not prized as 
they are in Christian families. Some of them are sold. 
In Afghanistan, daughters are sometimes known to be 
traded for cattle. Girls of thirteen in Siam are often 
offered for sale as serfs. In times of famine in China, 



^"The Social Work o£ Christian Missions," pp. 93-98. 

^Sometimes this is due not to cruelty or lack of affection, but 
to poverty. In times of famine, for example, some parents prefer 
to end a child's life rather than condemn it, as they fear, to a 
life of suffering. 



86 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

Dr. Taylor says that "little children are sold for a few 
shillings, and it is no uncommon sight to see the bodies 
of little girls exposed at the riverside."^ A recent writer 
says that "as many as i,ooo Chinese girls, who had been 
sent south to be sold as slaves, pass through the Yangtse 
port of Ichang in a single year :"^ 

But with the girls in mission lands, childhood soon comes 
to an end, for they are married at an early age. In India, 
one girl out of every eight is married between the ages 
of five and nine, and in most parts of that country, few 
girls beyond the age of thirteen are unmarried. Girls in 
Moslem lands are almost all married before the age of 
fourteen, and those in Siam before the age of thirteen. 
In the 3^ears when these little girls should be spending 
their days in lightheartedness, in school and at play, they 
are burdened with the cares of wifehood and motherhood. 
"It is almost impossible to exaggerate the physical evils 
of child marriage." 

We are distressed, and well we may be, over the condi- 
tion of homeless Belgian children and the Armenian child 
refugees. But should we not be more deeply distressed 
over the vast multitude of children in non-Christian lands 
whose normal condition is even more pitiful? Look at 
this Korean lad. The scars on his head and body show 
where hot irons have seared his flesh to let out the evil 
spirits of sickness. This sad little Indian mite is a widow. 
She is only ten years old, but her days of happiness are 
over. She is the drudge in her deceased husband's home 
and is the prey of evil men. This other little Indian girl 
was a beautiful innocent child the other day. But her face 
is already hard and the luster has gone from her eye. She 
has been 'married to the god' and now is a temple girl. 
The gross sensual looking man yonder is the priest of the 
temple. Here is a little Moslem girl. She is being trained 
to be the servant and plaything of the man whom she 
is to share with other wives. Like millions of her sisters, 
she is uneducated and her mind is filled with the gossip 

^*'The Social Work of Christian Missions," p. 95. 
^Missionary Review of the World, July, 191 6, p. 552. 



The Call of the World's Present Need 87 

and vile stories of the harem in which she has been 
brought up. This Chinese girl is walking with pitiful 
short steps because of her crushed, bound feet. She 
belongs to one of the sections of the country where the 
cruel practice has not been abandoned. They have a say- 
ing in China that "there is a pail of tears for every bound 
foot." And see this group of pallid, heavy-eyed Japanese 
girls, old before their time, coming out with dragging 
footsteps through the doors of the silkmill. They have 
been standing by their machines all through the night, for 
twelve long hours. The stockades yonder enclose the fac- 
tory dormitories where the girls will spend most of the 
next twelve hours, in conditions that are unspeakable. 
All of these are types. The conditions they represent are 
crimes against childhood. They are not the havoc sud- 
denly produced by an emergency, but are standing con- 
ditions in non-Christian lands. 

5. The non-Christian world degrades its womanhood. 
There is a mistaken notion that every woman in mission 
countries is oppressed and unhappy. This is far from 
being true, for many of them are loved and kindly treated 
by their husbands. But the orthodox view of w^omen that 
is held in general throughout the non-Christian world 
reduces her to an inferior order of beings, and the crimes 
against womanhood are second only to those against child- 
hood as social enormities. It is prevailingly true in mis- 
sion lands that the ignorance among women is much 
greater even than among men. The sphere of woman is 
characteristically one of narrow servitude. She is con- 
demned in miany cases to do the work of animals, the 
heaviest and most disagreeable forms of work. She is 
a drudge in the fields, in the factories, in the home. She 
is secluded in Hindu zenanas and Mohammedan harems. 
The binding of her feet in China is symbolic of the cramp- 
ing of her interests. She has no memories of glad years 
of adolescent girlhood. She marries young, and suffers 
the results of it for the rest of her life. 

Among Mohammedans polygamy is very common. The 
Koran allows a man to have four wives and as many 



88 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

concubines "as his right hand can hold," i. e., as he can 
afford. What this entails of degradation, jealousy, friction 
and acute suffering is beyond human language. Unlimited 
divorce is another evil of Islam that falls heavily on 
womanhood. A writer in The Moslem Worlds tells of a 
youth who was reproved for taking a twenty-eighth wife 
and who replied, 'Why should I not, when my father 
divorced thirty-eight?" This is, of course, an extreme 
case, but official records in Egypt show that out of every 
seven women married more than two are divorced. This 
understates the case, as many divorces are not officially 
recorded. 

The condition of Hindu widows is the last word in the 
degradation of womanhood. A curse is upon the widow, 
since blame for her husband's death is ascribed by some 
vague connection to her evil influence. She is perma- 
nently disgraced. Her hair cut off, her wardrobe taken 
from her, save one garment, she is condemned to drudgery 
and perhaps to infamous treatment, in the home of his 
family or else is cast back as a burden upon her own. 
She can never remarry for she belongs to her husband 
forever! More than 100,000 of these widows are under 
ten years of age, and over 1,000 of them are not yet one 
year old. Our compassions are going out to the un- 
fortunate women who have been made widows by the 
War. But if every married soldier under arms today were 
to be killed, all the widows that would be left in the 
world would not suffer a tithe of what India's 26,000,000 
widows are suffering now. Why have not our compas- 
sions gone out to them long ago? This condition has 
existed in India for ages. 

What a tragedy the V/ar has wrought in broken homes ! 
But should they excite a greater pity than the vast popu- 
lations which by reason of the status to which they have 
assigned womanhood have never known the meaning oi 
a true home and which have not even a word to signify 
"home" in our common understanding of the term? Our 



^Issue of January, 1913, PP- 64-65. 



The Call of the World's Present Need 89 

sense of chivalry has been outraged by the treatment which 
Armenian, Servian and other women have suffered in 
recent months from their captors. But where has our 
knightHness been that our wrath has not kindled at the 
indignities which women of Africa have been undergoing 
at the hands of men and at all these other wrongs from 
which womanhood in non-Christian lands has been suf- 
fering for centuries past? 

6. The non-Christian world is ignorant and illiterate. It 
makes up the great bulk of the eighty per cent of humanity 
that can neither read nor write. Japan is now a literate 
nation, but of the other mission lands India would be a 
fair illustration to compare with Christian nations such 
as the United States. According to the latest census 
reports, 94.1 per cent in India are illiterate, as against 6.5 
per cent in the United States. In China an even larger 
percentage are illiterate. In Latin America the illiteracy 
ranges from forty per cent to over eighty per cent in the 
various republics. In Moslem lands, Dr. Zwemer estimates 
that with the exception of Turkey, from seventy-five to 
ninety per cent are not literate, while in pagan Africa, 
apart from the influence of the mission schools, the peo- 
ple do not even knov/ that writing has ever been invented. 
Womanhood has been left in almost total ignorance. 
Even where b'oys have been given some education, few 
girls have been allowed to share it. Where education has 
come it has often proven ill-adapted to national and racial 
requirements. The government systems of education, 
where these exist, are found wanting by reason of their 
purely secular character. Even Japan, with its fine and 
exhaustive educational system, is today painfully aware 
of this deficiency. And now these nations have come to 
their time of transition. Now, if ever, they are needing, 
not only a soundly educated leadership, but an enlightened 
public mind. This adds urgency and pathos to the cry 
for education that comes up today out of the non-Chris- 
tian nations. The greater part of that world is still sod- 
den in ignorance and superstition, still shut out from the 
influences that liberate the mind, give meaning to the facts 



90 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

of life, make social emancipation and national progress 
possible and lay solid foundations for democracy, 

7. The non-Christian world is a world of social oppres- 
sion. The great social cleavages and oppressions of man- 
kind are to be found in the mission lands of the world. 
Slavery, which is the most flagrant form' of social op- 
pression, has not yet been rooted out of human relation- 
ships. Instances of girls being sold into slavery by 
thousands have already been quoted. A writer in The 
Missionary Review of the World^ says : ''There is still 
much to be done to drive slavery out of Africa. . . .' 
Something over 3,000 slaves, it is estimated, are imported 
into Morocco every year, most of them being brought 
by the terrible desert routes from Equatoria and the 
Sudan, the trails of the slave caravans being marked by 
the bleaching bones of the thousands. . . . Officials of the 
English branch of the Committee of Anti-Slavery and 
Aborigines Protective Society say it is admitted that slave 
owning, slave trading, and great cruelty to native races 
are widely prevalent throughout the tropical regions of 
South America and Mexico." 

There are other forms of oppression closely akin to 
slavery. Forced labor in Africa is resorted to not only 
for public undertakings but for private enterprises as 
well, and as such is a near equivalent t6 slavery. In 
Latin America peonage is "the dark shadow" of chattel 
slavery which is now prohibited by law. Professor Ross 
speaks of "the momentous, basic fact that from the Rio 
Grande down the West Coast to Cape Horn, free agri- 
cultural labor, as we know it, does not exist. "^ The 
laborer, unable to Hve on his trifling wages, is obliged 
to run into debt to the owner of the land. The debt 
accumulates until it is so large that it can never be worked 
oif, and "the peon becomes virtually a serf bound to 
work all his Hfe for a nominal wage. He can change 
employers only in case some one pays his debt and this 
binds him to a new master." 

^Issue of April, 1914? PP- 245-246. 

2E. A. Ross, "South of Panama," p. 144. 



The Call of the World's Present Need 91 

The caste system in India presents another form of 
social oppression. The system has brought some advan- 
tages to India, but they are meagre in proportion to its 
evils. It stratifies society into divisions and sub-divisions. 
Into whatever layer of society a man is born, there he 
must remain. He cannot improve his condition. He is 
bound hand and foot by his caste. He is forbidden to 
intermarry or even interdine with other castes. The caste 
system has limited cooperation, produced discord, pre- 
vented progress, crushed initiative, developed artificiality, 
prevented true social conceptions and thrown the eco- 
nomic order out of joint. It is India's central problem.^ 
But we are here concerned with the fact that it has 
submerged a great mass of the population. Down at the 
bottom of the scale are the Panchamas, the outcastes, or 
"untouchables." They may not enter Hindu temples, and 
usually are obliged to live outside the villages. They are 
the dregs of Hindu society, and have no rights recognized 
by Hinduism. Their touch is polluting, in some places 
even their shadow falling upon one is reckoned a defile- 
ment. These 50,000,000 outcastes are the toilers of India, 
manual labor being thought degrading by the caste people, 
and they are abject, servile and on the borderland of 
starvation. Many of them, like the peons of Latin Amer- 
ica, have fallen into debt to their landowners, and are 
little better than slaves. India's outcastes make a stronger 
claim upon our Christian sympathy than any other social 
group in the world. 

8. The non-Christian world is in moral need. Here 
especially we must caution ourselves against any com- 
placent attitude on the ground that we have recognized 
the lofty ethics of Jesus as our moral ideal. Let us 

^Of India's leaders, many are now crying out against caste as a 
national incubus that must be thrown off if India is really to be- 
come a force in the modern family of nations. Some reformers 
are willing to interdine with congenial men of other castes, and 
there have been a few cases of intermarriage. Some societies have 
been formed for the uplift of the depressed classes. These and 
other progressive movements, such as those relating to education, 
child marriage, etc., are likely to be accelerated after the War. 



92 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

humbly realize how far short we have fallen of attaining 
to it. It is easy to nail a flag to the mast. It is hard to 
fight for it. We must bear in mind, too, the fact that 
the ethical standards of different mission lands vary 
greatly. But speaking generally, the non-Christian world 
is in need of a great elevation of moral ideals. Much 
of the need which we have been discussing in this chap- 
ter is due to deficient moral standards. Truer concep- 
tions of right and wrong for the individual and of the 
broader social requirements of morality would have ob- 
viated many of these evils. The pioneer missionaries, as 
they have entered each new field, have been depressed by 
the moral atmosphere into which they have come. They 
have met with many excellencies and virtues, such as 
courtesy, hospitality, loyalty, filial devotion and certain 
codes of honor to which the people adhered. But they 
have found dishonesty, graft, governmental corruption, 
thievery, polygamy, impurity, injustice, cruelty, tyranny, 
slavery, infanticide, murder and cannibalism flourishing in 
their various communities with apparently little conscience 
against them. They have sometimes written home that 
they could bear loneliness and deprivation and hardship 
with glad hearts, but that to breathy the stifling foul air 
of sin day and night was almost beyond endurance. As 
contacts gradually were established between these back- 
ward peoples and Western civilization. Western vices were 
more quickly learned than Western virtues, and the moral 
problem became complicated. It is not necessary for us 
here to enter upon a survey of the ethical needs of this 
non-Christian land and that. They are sufficiently well 
known to the reader to persuade him of the ethical defi- 
ciencies in all non-Christian nations. Moreover, some of 
these nations are today well aware of them. They are 
confessing, through their leaders, their great need of 
moral deliverance, and are setting themselves to efforts 
for reform. But the difficulty of the problem appears 
when we remember that the upheavals through which 
these nations are now passing are removing many of the 
old sanctions and customs which had a certain restraining 



The Call of the World's Present Need 93 

and directing moral value, and apart from Christianity 
are providing nothing to take their place. 

9. The non-Christian world is in religious need. If 
back of all the other problems and needs of the non- 
Christian nations we find a moral issue, back of the moral 
problem again we come to the ultimate question of reli- 
gion. The view m.en have of God and the human soul's 
relation to God determines their view of sin and their 
determining of moral standards. 

But the religious need of the non-Christian world is not 
only a vital factor in all the aspects of need that we have 
been reviewing; it is in itself the greatest and most piti- 
able need of all. This mother in Cairo mourning the 
loss of her babe is to be pitied less because she is berieft 
than because she is without hope. This pariah in India 
is badly off because he is oppressed and hungry; but he 
is worse off because he does not know that he is a child 
of the Heavenly Father and of infinite worth in His eyes. 
This Japanese student is a pathetic figure because his heart 
is heavy over his moral failure; but the greater pathos 
is in the fact that he is unaware that there are both pardon 
and power for him in Christ. It is the pathos of blind 
men dying of thirst within reach of water, but with none 
to tell them of it or lead them to it. The Macedonian cry 
of the non-Christian world is most of all for a religion 
that will satisfy their deep cravings of the spirit, that 
will mitigate their present suffering and want and destroy 
at the roots all the social evils that press upon their life. 

III. Christianity Offers the Only Sufficient Relief for the 
Need of the Non-Christian World. 

We have made a long and oppressive catalogue of the 
needs which appear in the life of non-Christian peoples. 
They are needs which appear in individuals and in the 
whole fabric of corporate life, social, economic, govern- 
mental. How are they to be met? Fundamentally and 
ultimately they must be met by religion. 

The non-Christian religions are inadequate to bring re- 
lief. They have had their chance. Turkey is the answer 



94 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

to Mohammedanism, India is the answer to Hinduism, 
China to Confucianism, Japan to Buddhism. With no 
hindrance from outside factors, they have either produced 
the evils mentioned or have stood by in impotence and 
watched them develop. It is not that these religions have 
been destitute of high ideals. The failure has been in the 
inadequacy of even these ideals, and in the lack of reli- 
gious dynamic for the attainment of them. Physical suf- 
fering abounded, and they could produce no scientific 
treatment nor adequate charity for its relief. Famines 
and poverty brought about unspeakable want, but they 
could not cope with economic problems nor develop a 
heart of sympathy that would minister to need. They 
might be solicitous not to destroy the life of an insect, 
and even build hospitals for animals, but would view wuth 
callousness the loss of thousands of human lives. Rarely, 
if ever, have they of their own impulse put up a hospital, 
an asylum or an orphanage. They might worship a cow, 
but they would degrade and debase their women. They 
might multiply religious observances and receive thou- 
sands of dollars for the wedding of a pair of sacred 
monkeys, but they would have no concern for daughters 
that were sold in marriage. They might set a great glit- 
ter upon religious ceremonial, but they would not see the 
beauty and glory and possibilities of childhood. They 
might write a mass of sacred literature, but they would 
wink at duplicity, lust and cruelty. They might set up 
a million shrines, but would carry immorality into the 
very temples of religion. They might mutilate human 
bodies in ascetism, but would utter no protest against 
social injustice that pressed the life blood out of the 
poor and weak. They might even set up moral codes 
and write exalted precepts into them, but they would 
not, because they could not, offer a spiritual power that 
would make high morality possible. Yes, and they might 
crowd their pantheons with many gods, but they could 
furnish none that was worthy of the trust and obedience 
of men. They could teach devotees to fear and flee from 
the deities they worshipped, but none to come close to 



The Call of the World's Present Need 95 

them in love. They could teach the words, O Great Spirit, 
O Allah, O Swami, O Lord Buddha, but rrot the words, 
Our Father. 

Into this world of spiritual impotency and destitution 
Jesus Christ comes, and at once He begins to prove His 
sufficiency to meet the utmost needs of individual hum.an 
life. For religious formalism He substitutes reality. For 
fatalism and a materialistic view of life He substitutes 
a spiritual conception of the universe ; for darkened minds, 
enlightenment; for loneliness and despair. His own friend- 
ship and assurance ; for a hopeless outlook into the life 
beyond, the sure promise of immortality; for an inferior 
ethical ideal, divorced from religion, a surpreme moral 
standard that finds all its sanctions in religion. 

The perfect adequacy of Jesus Christ to meet not only 
individual requirements but the whole range of social and 
national need has been proven in every land to which He 
has been taken. He has gone with a fellow feeling for 
their wrongs and sufferings. 

The other gods were strong; but Thou wast weak; 

They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne; 
But to our wounds only God's wounds can speak, 

And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone. 

But not only has He brought a message of friendly sym- 
pathy and cheer; He has resolutely taken the problems in 
hand. He has rid whole communities of debasing prac- 
tices. He has set down schools and colleges in all these 
lands to remove ignorance and superstition, and as minds 
became educated He has furnished them with Christian 
Scriptures and other uplifting literature. He has dis- 
placed a callousness to human suffering by a warm heart 
of tenderness, and has established orphanages, asylums and 
hospitals to care for the suffering and neglected. He has 
carried money to the indigent and food to the hungry. 
He has taken the little- children in His arms and shown 
how they should be preserved -and developed. He has 
exalted woman from her low condition to a throne of 
power and dignity and sacred regard. He has established 



96 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

quiet, thrifty, well-ordered community life. He has taught 
men how to gain a better livelihood through new indus- 
tries and improved agriculture. He has dignified labor 
and raised the standards of living. He has supplanted 
social oppression by a sense of the infinite worth of each 
individual child of the Highest, and selfish individualism 
by a sense of corporate responsibility that makes all men 
keepers of all their brothers. He has initiated movements 
for political and social reform. He has checked disorder 
and class antagonism. He has brought a zeal for national 
progress and developed a capacity for it. He has pro- 
duced a divine discontent with old institutions and customs 
and standards that were confining or perverting the 
powers of men, and has proposed for their acceptance 
new institutions and ideals and scales of value. He has 
instilled a passion for liberty and has prepared nations for 
the use of it. He has spread abroad His own emancipat- 
ing principles of democracy. 

And behind and through all this, He has brought to the 
non-Christian world a spiritual message. It is a message 
that announces the Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood, 
essential equality and mutual obligations of all men as 
brethren. It is a message that not only proclaims a high 
moral standard, but also furnishes the inner power where- 
by the standard may be attained. It is a message that 
takes into account the totality of human need, individual 
and social. It is a message that deals with all the issues 
of the present life and looks forward with hope and 
eagerness to the life beyond. 

These are things that He is actually doing today in 
non-Christian lands even as He has been doing them for 
ages in Western nations that were once non-Christian. 
He is doing them through various instrumentalities, but 
mainly through the agency of foreign missions, evangelis- 
tic, humanitarian, medical, educational, literary and in- 
dustrial. 

It is primarily through the missionary himself that 
Christ brings His life into the need of the non-Christian 
world. He is more than Christ's Herald. He is His repre- 



The Call of the World's Present Need 97 

sentative, His executive, His agent. Through the mis- 
sionary's lips the message of truth is spoken. By his life 
it is interpreted. By his activities it is expressed in in- 
stitutional forms and brought to bear upon the problems 
of the nation. The spread of the missionary message 
is characteristically ''a campaign of incarnation." That is 
what the world is supremely needing today, a flesh and 
blood manifestation of the friendly, loving spirit of Jesus 
Christ. Apart from a sufficient offering of qualified men 
and women who will forget self and go forth to the less 
favored peoples of the earth to incarnate Christ among 
them, the needs of the non-Christian world will never 
be met. 

But not alone are foreign missionaries required. There 
is need for a great body of Christian disciples in these 
lands which are the bases of supply for the outgoing 
ministrations of Christianity w^ho will make their own 
the needs of the non-Christian world. We can never 
bring ourselves to the place of true international brother- 
hood and service, we can never spread the Christian ideals 
of democracy, we xan never be citizens of the world in 
the sense of those who see the whole world as potentially 
the empire of Christ, until we understand the vast needs 
of the nations now without Christ, sympathize with them 
deeply and act generously for their relief. "This is a 
day when world measurements should be laid down on 
all our thoughts"^ and upon all our feelings as well. 

We cannot sufficiently remind ourselves that in relieving 
these deep and intricate needs of the non-Christian nations 
we are ministering to Christ Himself. What a privilege 
to travel round this blessed orbit of love from Christ to 
Christ ! If we are going to have anything worth sending 
out or taking in our own persons to the needs of mankind 
yonder, we must first go to Him to receive it from His 
own hands. He has all the supply that is required and the 
scars on His hands remind us How He obtained it. And 
as we go out with this precious freight of relief across 



'The Churches of Christ in Time of War," p. 105. 



98 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

the seas, we find Christ there. However far we penetrate 
across rivers and deserts into the regions beyond, if we 
come upon a human need we find that Christ has identi- 
fied Himself with it. It is His need. It may be a Siamese 
leper by the wayside, it may be a hungry orphan boy in 
India whose father was killed over in France, it may 
be an Egyptian woman in a luxurious harem, it may be a 
Brahman student who finds his old faith slipping away, 
and who is struggling to find what will satisfy his reli- 
gious life, it may be a little African girl who needs an 
education, it may be an injured Chinese coolie — but it is 
His need. Inasmuch as we relieve it, we relieve His 
suffering. We started out from Christ, we now come back 
to Him. We have compassed the golden circle of the 
love of God. 



CHAPTER V 

THE CALL FOR A WORLD PROGRAM IN THE CHURCH 

The world sweep of the obligations that inhere in Chris- 
tian discipleship is one of the vivid revelations made by 
the War. These obligations carry us further than an 
appreciation of the present aggravated needs of the non- 
Christian nations. They lead us into a purpose and a 
program that will bring the resources that are in Jesus 
Christ to bear upon these needs in every part of the w^orld. 
And, as we shall see, just because of the War's effects the 
purpose should be more whole-hearted and the program 
more aggressive. 

The words of Jesus do not sound more faintly as they 
travel down the centuries. The instructions He gave so 
clearly time and again after His resurrection that His mes- 
sage and His work should be spread throughout all the 
nations are heard with greater distinctness today than at 
any time since the apostolic age. And apart from those 
explicit directions, we are catching in every great truth 
He uttered an implied direction for its propagation. What 
He said then is precisely what all the nations are needing 
to hear and accept today. Christians in larger numbers 
than ever before are coming to understand that He al- 
ways spoke in intention to a world audience, though His 
own voice carried to but a small circle, and that He pro- 
posed to use His disciples as reproducing instruments to 
the ends of the earth. In other words, the conviction is 
spreading rapidly today that our religion is a universal 
religion, and that a universal religion is a missionary reli- 
gion. And with this conviction there is the wonder that 
long ago the religion of our Lord was not made universal 

99 



lOO The Call of a World Task in War Time 

in fact, at least in the sense of being announced to all 
mankind. Had that been accomplished, the world might 
not now be passing through these agonizing years. We 
are to consider in this chapter whether the task should 
not now be completed, whether this generation of Chris- 
tians should not carry the Gospel to its own generation of 
non-Christians. 

We do not wait for the timid or the selfish or the un- 
believing to bring forward the difficulties involved. We 
face them frankly. The mere bulk of the task is over- 
whelming. There are more people in the world today to 
whom Christ has not been named than there ever were 
before. The populations of non-Christian lands are in- 
creasing more rapidly than converts are being made. One 
hundred and twenty-two millions of people are in lands 
that are not now occupied by any Protestant Christian 
worker, and are not even included in the plans of any 
missionary society.^ And in the areas that are occupied 
multitudes are unreached. In Japan two-thirds of the 
population have yet to be evangelized. In China, i,557 
walled cities are without any Christian worker. Five prov- 
inces of Mexico have not a single" Protestant missionary. 
On the present b^sis of missionary effort, probably one- 
third of the people in the world today will die without 
hearing the Gospel of the Kingdom. To the colossal 
dimensions of the task and its staggering intensive diffi- 
culties, the new difficulties which have entered into the 
situation, and which were reviewed in a preceding chap- 
ter, must be added. We study the difficulties carefully, 
.but we do not take counsel of them. A true soldier does 
not reckon up the risks involved, he carries out orders. 
A true Christian does not figure out the possibilities of 
success, he does his duty. This generation of Christians 
must not base its program on difficulties, it must meet 
its obvious responsibility. An impossible task? Well, if 
it is, the glory of its accomplishment will be all the 
greater. 



^World Missionary Conference Report, 1910, Vol. I, p. 283. 



Call for a World Program in the Church loi 

Let us inquire into the reasons why this generation of 
Christians should undertake to meet their Lord's desire 
that His message should be given to the entire human 
family. 

I. War Conditions are Favorable to Missionary Expansion, 

Talk missionary expansion to some persons in war time 
and they promptly reply that this is the time to retrench. 
They say that Christians are not in a position now to 
meet the required cost. For their own part, the demands 
for gifts to philanthropic and patriotic funds have multi- 
plied so greatly that they have felt it necessary to trans- 
fer to these emergency needs the money they had pre- 
viously been giving to missionary purposes. The fallacy 
of this reasoning borders on recreancy. The supplanting 
of one need by another as an object of financial help im- 
plies that there is a precise amount of money available 
with each individual for unselfish uses, and that that exact 
and ultimate sum was already being expended. There are 
few who could honestly claim that this is the case. Still 
less is it the case that in the Church as a whole there is ' 
a measurable and definite amount available for missionary 
undertakings. 

What is more, the deflecting of money from missionary 
purposes to some emergent benevolence does not repre- 
sent one's own giving at all. Suppose a man's mission- 
ary contribution has been going to the support of an 
orphanage in China, and he suddenly stops that flow of 
money and turns it into a Red Cross channel. He is not 
the one to be thanked by the Red Cross. He has not 
added anything to his benevolent expenses. The only 
sacrifice has been in China where, unless some one else 
has taken up that giver's responsibility, part of the orphan- 
age work was shut down. There is something cheap in 
his accepting credit for a generous benefaction, when the 
real sacrifice has been made not by him but by some little 
orphans in China. The requirements of missionary work 
and all other necessary enterprises in the years before 



I02 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

the War are requirements still **New occasions teach 
new duties." The energetic calls for money that the 
War has brought are calls for the enlarged practice of 
benevolence. They bring the opportunity for real sacri- 
fice and yet more sacrifice. The new calls must certainly 
be met, and met so generously that every Christian, how- 
ever wealthy, will be obliged to retrench at some points 
in his usual outlays of money. But is the retrenchment 
to be made at the point of missionary expense? Or is that 
item the one farthest removed from luxury in the budget 
of the Christian? 

There are others v/ho, while they agree that the con- 
tinuing demands of foreign missions should not be eclipsed 
by anything emergent, contend that the best to be ex- 
pected in the lean years of war is that existing work 
should be maintained. The attention of Christians is 
preoccupied by the War. The number of our men available 
for missionary effort is now greatly reduced, and, with the 
increased cost of living, Christians will do well if they 
maintain their present missionary gifts. Let us keep the 
missionary flag flying, they say, but let us not for the 
'present, try to move it forward. At first glance this is 
perfectly reasonable. But, as we shall see later, attention 
and men and money are available for an advance. The 
War and the obligations it brings need not divert the at- 
tention of Christians from their missionary responsi- 
bilities, but may rather direct attention to those very 
duties; the securing of men for Christian service is not 
and never has been a numerical problem but one of de- 
votion; the necessary supplies of money depend more 
on fullness of the heart than of the pocket. The pres- 
ent apparent deficiency in these respects should not hold 
us back for a moment. We cannot believe that the War 
or any of its effects can have modified the will of God 
that the world should be evangelized. 

The possibilities in the Christian Church for large and 
immediate missionary developments in the midst of the 
disturbances and hardships caused by War is not an 
academic question, for we have many a page of Church 



Call for a World Program in the Church 103 

history to turn to for precedent We discover that most 
of the great missionary advances, in common with other 
forward movements in the moral and spiritual life of 
nations in modern times, had their birth in times of war. 
It was in 1649, at the close of a great civil war, that the 
first missionary society in England was founded under the 
name of *The Corporation for the Propagation of the 
Gospel in New England."^ In 1701 the Society for the 
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts had its birth 
"in an interval between two long and exhausting wars in 
which Great Britain was engaged" 

During the period of the Napoleonic Wars the modem 
missionary movement in Great Britain had its real begin- 
ning, some of the great missionary societies, such as the 
Church Missionary Society, the London Missionary So- 
ciety and the Baptist Missionary Society, being formed 
between 1792 and 1804. In the latter year the British 
and Foreign Bible Society was founded. It was during 
the War of 18 12 that the first missionaries were sent out 
by an American society. 

If we open our Church history at the period of the 
American Civil War, we read the story of another large 
missionary advance. At least one of the foreign mission- 
ary societies of the United States, that of the Southern 
Presbyterian Church, had its beginning in the midst of 
those difficult and exhausting years, and the other so- 
cieties leaped into new activity. Dr. Robert E. Speer 
says that "the Christian conscience of the nation during 
the days of the Civil War saw in the generous outpouring 
of life at the call of the nation not a reason for exemp- 
tion, but a ground of appeal in the matter of missionary 
service."^ In France we have a similar record. In the 
period just following the Franco-Prussian War there was 



^It is interesting to note that this society was founded by the 
English Parliament under the advocacy of Oliver Cromwell. 

^See "The Student Volunteer Movement: Record for 191 6," by 
Fennell P. Turner, pages 19-20, for Dr. Sneer's story of the mis- 
sionary progress of one great church during and following the 
Civil War. 



I04 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

a large expansion of the work of both the Roman Catholic 
and Protestant missionary societies. 

Whether it has been due to the quickening of Christian 
sympathies in time of war, the widespread exercise of 
the spirit of sacrifice, the purifying and disciplining of 
the Church, or the special blessing of God upon the faith 
and devotion of the Christians who in such times were 
ready to move forward, the inspiring fact stands out that 
times of war have been times of missionary advance. 
Should it be otherwise now? It is the way of the brave 
and believing spirit to see in the very catastrophe of the 
hour an opportunity for the overruling power of God to be 
revealed for His world purposes. 

On the whole, the missionary societies of Great Britain 
and Canada have held their ground in the past four years. 
Some have made substantial gains, besides clearing off 
large deficits. The Wesleyan Missionary Society in Eng- 
land and the Methodist Missionary Society in Canada 
had a larger income in 1916 than in any previous year. 
It is not surprising that some churches are now preparing 
for exceptional advances. The American Board, as part 
of its forward program, plans to place no new mission- 
aries in Turkey as soon as the War is over. The Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church has already launched a movement 
that outstrips any missionary undertaking in the history 
of the Christian Church. It has set itself to a program 
of forward work which will involve the raising and ex- 
pending of forty million dollars in the next five years, and 
the maintaining of its operations on this enlarged basis 
in the following years. This will mean that this one 
church proposes to give annually more than three times 
as much as it or any other church in the United States 
or Canada has ever given in a year. It will mean that 
one strong section of the body of Christ will come meas- 
urably near to the evangelizing of its share of the world 
in this generation. It will not mean the neglecting of 
home needs; for this same church plans to expend a 
corresponding amount upon its work in the United States. 
If every branch of the Christian Church would with equal 



Call for a World Program in the Church 105 

deliberation and prayer nx upon a similar program, each 
several share of the task of world evangelization would 
be assumed. Must we not believe that the Head of the 
Church would respond to this loyal adventure of faith 
and devotion by releasing such a tide of divine energy 
as has never yet swept through the windows of Heaven 
into the undertakings of men? 

n. We Must Make Good the Delinquencies of Previous 
Generations. 

Why is the greater part of mankind still without the 
Gospel of Jesus Christ? It is not because of any limita- 
tions in the ability of any section of the human race to 
understand and receive the Christian message, nor in the 
ability of the Gospel to meet the full requirements of men 
in everj^ age, nor in the eagerness of God to reveal it as 
His power unto salvation to the whole of human life 
throughout the world, nor, we believe, in the conditions 
under which it would have been propagated in any previous 
time. It is because of limitations which have been in 
the Church herself. We must remember that, as Dr. E. 
A. Lawrence puts it, the Church is "the organ of the King- 
dom's expansion." It is doubtless true that if the Church 
had lived up to her possibilities in faith and sacrifice the 
world would have been evangelized long ago. The Chris- 
tians of the early Church put forth a strong effort to 
evangelize the world, and, as Dr. Charles R. Watson points 
out, nearly succeeded in doing so.^ But since then no 
generation of Christians has seriously undertaken its full 
duty to the Gospel and to the world, and meantime the 
task has kept growing even larger. We are heirs to 
countless benefits . left by the Christian generations that 
have preceded us, and we are also heirs to many delin- 
quencies. We are ready enough to accept the advantages 
that have come down to us. Shall we be slow to take 
up the obligations we have inherited? As a Church we 



^God's Plan of World Redemption, chs. V. VI. 



io6 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

can secure no exemption trom our present task on the 
ground that through the past negligence of the Church 
the undertaking has now assumed such discouraging pro- 
portions. Dr. Zwemer likens such a claim to that of the 
murderer who, after killing his father and mother, be- 
sought the court for mercy on the ground that he was 
an orphan. It is through the Church's neglect that the 
task is unfinished ; it is for the Church now to redouble 
her energies and complete the task. 

Unfortunately there are many Christians who, without 
regard to the unique opportunities and demands of our 
day, would be quite content that we should attempt no 
unusual program for the spread of the Kingdom of Christ. 
They would not elevate this program to a war basis, call- 
ing for a new scale of idealism and sacrifice, of determina- 
tion and energy. They would do an ordinary thing at 
an extraordinary time, and let the later generations deal 
with an increment of duty. They are willing that the 
Church should continue to live under the load of a large 
and increasing Standing Debt and be satisfied with occa- 
sional minor contributions to a Sinking . Fund. Even if 
this easy-going procedure were not condemned by the 
burdens which it imposes on Christians of a later day. 
it is utterly condemned by the unspeakable loss to which 
it subjects those who will be unevangelized through all 
the generations until the task is done. Since Jesus Christ 
died for all of these and they will all be in desperate need 
of Him, we have no shred of justification for carrying 
forward to the responsibility of a future body of Christians 
any fraction of this task which it is in our power to ac- 
complish in our own time. The Church of today must 
make good the delinquencies of the Church of yesterday, 
at least to the extent of dealing fairly by its own genera- 
tion of men and women who are yet without Christ. 
After all, the issue is clear. Is our aim to be the com- 
plete evangelization of the world whenever the Church 
will see fit and will gather up enough daring and energy 
and faith to do it? Or is it to be the evangelization of 
our world of men in our day, with all that evangelization 



Call for a World Program in the Church 107 

implies? We shall leave problems enough to those who 
will come after us ; let us not bequeath this one. 

III. The World Situation in no Previous Generation Pre- 
sented Such a Summons. 

We must bear in mind also the fact that no previous 
generation of Christians has been confronted with such a 
commanding summons to give Christ to the world as is 
facing us in the international situation today. To bring 
this fact convincingly before us we need only review 
certain considerations that have emerged in our discus- 
sion thus far of present world conditions. 

1, The need of the non-Christian world was never .so 
great as it is today. It was a bitter enough need before 
ever the War broke out. Often our sympathies were 
kindled as we pictured to ourselves a leper in the Philip- 
pines, a wife in a Persian harem, a child widow in India, 
a mill hand in Tokyo, a semi-slave in a Congo labor gang. 
We tried to multiply the need of one life to whom Christ 
had never come by the total number of unevangelized, 
and our souls were overwhelmed. Then came the W^ar. 
Now to the life of the nations without Christ there has 
come a great new access of sorrow, even as there has 
to us. And with the multiplying touch of the worst 
elements of Western civilization a whole baneful range 
of^ sin and misery is now invading the life of the less 
favored nations of the world. 

2, The true expression of Christianity demands im- 
mediate action. In recent years the non-Christian world 
has been made increasingly aware of glaring defects in 
the practices of individuals and nations called Christian. 
But the outbreak and progress of the War have brought 
the ugliness and viciousness of these blemishes into a 
lurid light We have sent a few messengers, a very few, 
into the great non-Christian populations to say, and so 
far as they could to show, that the defects were not a 
part of Christianity but the shadows behind the light, 
the transgression that proved the law. Now, however, 
the evil to be offset and disclaimed is so notorious and so 



io8 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

widespread that nothing short of a world-wide proclama- 
tion and exhibition of the love of God will be a sufficient 
disclaimer of what has been unchristian in our life and 
a vindication of what is truly the spirit of Christ. 

3. The interests of world peace demand immediate world 
evangelization. The old order is passing and the nations 
are face to face in a new way. Nothing can make the 
new era one of peace but a general acceptance, in the East 
and West alike, of the principles of Jesus in international 
relationships. The non-Christian nations have now grown 
in power and national self-consciousness to the point where 
they may easily become a menace to the peace of the 
world. Only if Jesus Christ invades their national life 
and sets His mark upon it can that danger be averted. 
But this cannot take place unless He is made known 
throughout those nations. 

4. Other contacts will not wait for later generations. 
Increasingly the life of each nation is being thrown 
against the life of all the other nations. We are certain 
to carry to the non-Christian world our most vicious con- 
taminations. We must bring also the sweetening, purify- 
ing power of the life of Jesus. The lessons of sin and 
social oppression and materialism are easily learned by 
nations, and the effects of these will surely come back 
upon our own national life. It is both unfair and un- 
safe to develop other contacts with the non-Christian 
world unless we develop correspondingly our religious 
contact. If other influences will not wait till a future day, 
we dare not hold back our Christianity for a later genera- 
tion to carry into all the world. 

5. The world was never so open as now to the Christian 
message. The prayers which the Church used to offer 
that the doors of the nations would be opened to the 
Gospel have been abundantly answered. The greatest 
obstacles were never difficulties of travel, dangers or gov- 
ernmental inhibitions, all of which are now being largely 
overcome. The chief barriers that blocked the advance 
of Christianity were suspicion, prejudice, the iron law of 
custom, long established social institutions, the organized 



Call for a World Program in the Church 109 

and often violent opposition of religious bigotry and a 
passionate loyalty to traditional faiths. Today these diffi- 
culties are melting away. Conservatism is decreasing, old 
institutions are being overturned, the non-Christian reli- 
gions, speaking generally, are steadily losing their control, 
the true errand of the missionary is being understood and 
appreciated. Unless all signs fail, the opportunities will 
increase rather than diminish after the War. The Mo- 
hammedan world, which has presented a well-nigh impreg- 
nable opposition to the Christian approach, bids fair to 
become much more accessible than hitherto it has been. 
Missionary leaders anticipate also that the distribution of 
returned soldiers among the cities and villages of Africa 
and Asia after the War will serve to produce a greater 
hospitality towards the Gospel of Christ in their various 
countries. Many doors stand open today. But we cannot 
expect that they will all remain open beyond our gen- 
eration. 

6. Africa may be won to Christ or to Mohammed within 
this generation. Year by year the tides of Mohammedan 
advance keep moving southward in Africa; and they are 
coming in from the South and the East as well. As they 
come, paganism offers almost no resistance. Every Mos- 
lem trader is a missionary. He presents a religion which 
makes easy moral and religious demands and which offers 
worldly inducements. The pagan soon recognizes the 
superiority of the new religion to his own, readily em- 
braces it and forthwith becomes harder to win to the 
Christian faith than when he was an animist. Dr. C. R. 
Watson states that ten times as many pagans are embrac- 
ing Islam as are being won to the Christian faith. Africa 
will not remain pagan. The issue is between Islam and 
Christianity, and competent observers tell us that the 
issue will be settled within the next two or three decades. 

7. The plasticity of many non-Christian nations is now 
at its maximum. The age-long civilizations of the East 
have been overturned. Revolutionary ideas have taken 
hold of political, educational, social and economic life. 
The standards and institutions that will control the future 



no The Call of a World Task in War Time 

of China, Japan, India and the Moslem world for gen- 
erations to come are being fashioned today. Two-thirds 
of the world's population during the past ten years have 
been in the throes of this upheaval. As a result of the 
War the transition period is being carried to a more 
decisive stage in those nations, and even remote parts of 
interior Africa and Central Asia are coming under the 
transforming spell of Western enlightenment and progress. 
By what flight of the imagination could we conceive of 
a more impressionable condition in the non-Christian 
world? But it will not remain plastic. Already before 
the eyes of this Christian generation the nrroulds are 
being prepared in which the new era in the non-Christian 
nations will take its permanent form. And, please God, 
we shall not fail to bring the influence of Jesus Christ 
into the period of preparation, A later generation can- 
not do it. 

8. An unprecedented movement towards Christianity is 
in progress in certain mission lands. While this move- 
ment is not of a general character, it is gathering in 
volume and momentum. In parts of Japan^ Chosen, China 
and Africa there are vigorous revivals and large additions 
to the membership of the native churches — beyond all 
precedent in some sections. In India the movement of 
the submerged masses towards Christianity is spreading 
with bewildering rapidity. He gives twice who gives his 
life quickly for the evangelizing of these outcaste mil- 
lions. Were all the rest of the missionary work in the 
world at a standstill, the mass- movement in India would 
signalize this as an epoch of marvelous missionary oppor- 
tunit}^ The turning to Christ of thousands of the in- 
tellectual classes of China is another fact of colossal 
proportions marking this decade as a mountain peak in 
missionary history. Verily the fields are white. If this 
generation of Christians will not reap, the harvest will 
rot upon the ground. 

Need anything further be said to demonstrate that the 
challenge of the present world situation for a mighty mis- 
sionary advance is unique in the history of the Christian 



Call for a World Program in the Church in 

Church? We dare not act and pray as though this situa- 
tion did not exist. This generation has been brought up 
to a new occasion. It must meet it in a new way. How 
pregnant are these words trom tlie message of the Edin- 
burgh Conference in 1910, in the Hght of the momentous 
developments within the seven and a half years since they 
were uttered : 

"Just as a great national danger demands a new standard 
of patriotism and service from every citizen, so the pres- 
ent condition of the world and the missionary task de- 
mands from every Christian, and from every congregation, 
a change in the existing scale of missionary zeal and serv- 
ice, and the elevation of our spiritual ideal. 

"The old scale and the old ideal were framed in view 
of a state of the world which has ceased to exist. They 
are no longer adequate for the new world which is arising 
out of the ruins of the old. . . . The providence of God 
has led us all into a new world of opportunity, of danger, 
and of duty." 

IV. The Present Resources of the Church are Adequate 
to a Program of World Evangelisation. 

The thoughtful student of world conditions today, unless 
he has quite ruled God out of the guidance of human 
affairs, cannot fail to see the Divine hand in the prepara- 
tion of the nations for the Christian message. If he turns 
to the Christian Church, w^hich is the appointed instrument 
for the spread of this message, he is met by equally con- 
vincing evidence of the working of God. • The Church is 
being equipped to carry the Gospel into all the earth with 
a swift progress. Never have her resources been so great. 

I. There are new resources in the thought and temper 
of the Church's membership. Christian men and women 
have been led into serious contemplation upon the deeper 
meanings of their faith and the obligations it imposes on 
discipleship. There is a clearer appreciation of the value 
of Christ to human experience. Inevitably there goes with 
this a recognition that He alone can meet the needs of 



112 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

humanity everywhere. Hitherto the lack of this experi- 
ence, and this conviction on the part of Christians has been 
the chief factor in staying the expansion of Christ's King- 
dom in the earth. And it is the facing of the minds and 
hearts of individual Christians towards Christ that gives 
to the Church the first and greatest equipment for her 
world task. It is only those who can answer His ques- 
tion "Lovest thou Me?'* that are eager or qualified to 
feed His sheep. 

But there are other evidences of a growing readiness 
in the thought and temper of the Church to undertake a 
world enterprise. A new world consciousness is spreading 
among Christians, as among others today, displacing the 
former parochialism that found the horizon of its responsi- 
bility by climbing to its own church steeple. This habit 
of world thought has naturally been developed rapidly 
within the years of the War.^ Christianize the interna- 
tional, or "supra-national" thinking of men, and you have 
put a missionary purpose into it. There has also been 
growing in Christians during recent years a sense of 
social obligation, a desire to have a share in the Christian- 
izing of all human relationships within our communities. 
Internationalize that idea of social Christianity and you 
have the modern missionary aim, in one of its most im- 
portant aspects. This the War should help to accom- 
plish. During these years of struggle, years of bowed 
heads and broken hearts and emptied lives, there has 
been a quickening of many sympathies which had been 
dormant. Attach those sympathies to the burdens and 
wrongs and sufferings of the multitudes in the regions 
beyond, who have not known Christ, and you have a mis- 
sionary passion. And with the capacity for Christian 



^In this new habit of thought the War is bound to prove a 
strong missionary asset. When peace is declared and the Christian 
officers and men, the chaplains, the Red Cross workers, the Y. M. 
C. A. secretaries and others who have been serving the forces 
overseas return, they will be a strong leaven of world thinking in 
their communities and churches. Every home that has contributed 
of its members to the Army or the Navy has already a new meas- 
ure of international interest. 



Call for a World Program in the Church 113 

sympathy there has been displayed a new capacity for 
Christian sacrifice. Link up that sacrificial habit with the 
claims of Christ in behalf of the wider circle of humanity, 
and you have missionary action. All the moral resources 
demanded of the Church for the work of world redemp- 
tion — idealism, heroism, loyalty, unselfishness — have been 
exhibited and put into new exercise within the past few 
years. The mass of Christians are more ready today 
than ever before to be enlisted in a great conquering 
Crusade for the evangelization of the world. 

2. The Church has rich resources in missionary experi- 
ence. Not only has she mistakes and successes of the 
past century of missionary effort from which to draw 
lessons of efficiency, but she has behind her the powerful 
momentum of the aggressive missionary activities which 
have marked the past three decades. The Student Volun- 
teer Movement, the Laymen's Missionary Movement, the 
Missionary Education Movement, the Foreign Missions 
Conference, and the new development and coordination 
of the work of the Women's Missionary Societies are 
evidences of this missionary awakening. The emergence 
of a science of missions, the rapid growth in volume and 
quality of missionary literature, the great missionary 
Councils of War at Edinburgh in 1910 and at Panama in 
1916 are further evidences. 

But the past years of missionary activity have done more 
than teach lessons of effective organization and adminis- 
tration. They have added greatly to our knowledge of 
non-Christian peoples and the conditions under which 
foreign missionary work must be carried on. These years 
of missionary activity have also developed a degree of 
unity and cooperation among the various branches of 
Christianity such as has never been called forth by any 
other undertaking. The workers in the mission field have 
learned that without sacrificing their denominational at- 
tachments and loyalty they can often pool their interests, 
link up their forces and coordinate their efforts. Econ- 
omy, efficiency and encouragement have been the result. 
No aspect of missionary work today is more noteworthy 



114 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

than this new trend towards mutual confidence and co- 
operation among the various communions. 

The resources in missionary experience include also the 
years of seed-sowing on the mission field out of which 
large harvests are inevitable and are already being reaped ; 
the distribution at points of strategy of nearly 25,000 
foreign missionaries ; the translation of the Christian 
Scriptures in whole or in part into 600 languages and 
dialects ; the work of the hospitals, orphanages and other 
humanitarian institutions, of the extensive system of col- 
leges and schools of all grades, of the 'many printing 
presses and of other institutional features of the mission- 
ary enterprise; the training of native Christian leaders 
of ability and spiritual power ; the Christian churches 
which have been planted broadcast across the non-Chris- 
tian nations, and which are rapidly becoming self-support- 
ing, self -directing and self-propagating; the development 
of a native Christian community as a base of effort and 
a witness to the social sufficiency of Christianity; the 
leaven of Christian ideas working powerfully in the 
modern thought of non-Christian societies.^ If the Chris- 
tian Church does not undertake at once the full program 
of world evangelization, it is not because she is lacking in 
a fund of missionary experience. 

3. The Church has ample resources in money. Think 
of the money which Christian nations are expending in 
the destructive work of warfare. In recent months the 
warring nations have been spending four times as much 
money upon their operations in a day as they spend on 
their foreign missionary work in a year. The price of 
one modern battleship would finance all the Protestant 
missionary operations throughout the world for five 
months on the present basis. England's war expenses for 

^In 1 91 6, according to "World Statistics of Christian Missions," 
there were 24,039 foreign workers in the mission field, 26,210 
organized native churches reported a membership of 2,408,900, a staff 
of trained native workers numbering 109,099 was employed, there 
were 109 mission colleges and 38,968 schools with a total registration 
of 1,930,578, and 2,937 hospitals and dispensaries had given relief 
to 3»i 07,755 persons. 



Call for a World Program in the Church 115 

a day are equal to the missionary budget of Protestant 
Christendom for a year. The United States estimated 
that her war expenses for the present fiscal year would 
amount to $50,000,000 a day, or $580 a second. If for one 
day a like sum could be set aside for the work of new 
foreign missionaries, enough men and women could be 
transported to their fields, and maintained during their 
first year, to compass the evangelization of the world in 
this generation. The United Stated goes to the "movies" 
and spends $500,000,000 a year for the privilege. It is 
estimated that the members of evangelical churches in 
this one country- possess $15,000,000,000. It is also esti- 
mated that if the church members in Canada and the 
United States would give the equivalent of one street car 
fare a week, the evangelization of the world could be 
financed. 

The ability of Canadians to give unselfishly and in large 
amounts has been strikingly demonstrated within the last 
four years. The same has been true of the United States, 
especially during the past year. As was pointed out in 
the previous chapter, this one country in 1917 contributed 
to altruistic purposes connected with the War more than 
ten times as much as it had given in any previous year 
for similar purposes. The largest unselfish outlays of 
money ever made in Protestant America have been made 
in these difficult years of the War. Is it too much to 
expect that Christians will be equally unselfish in the 
use of their money in the years that will follow the War? 
And if they seriously desire to have the knowledge of 
Christ go into all the world, will they be restrained be- 
cause the undertaking would cost them each four cents 
a week?^ 



^Th€ average foreign missionary contribution from Protestant 
church members in the United States and Canada in 191 7 was 80 
cents. The average yearly expense of the foreign missionary effort 
carried on by these churches amounts to about $2,000 (including 
salary) for each missionary in service. To send out an additional 
12,000 workers from these two countries would involve on this 
basis an added annual cost of $24,000,000, which amounts to $1.00 
per member. 



ii6 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

4. The Church has adequate resources in men.^ Dr. 
Mott estimated in 1900 that to evangelize the world in 
this generation an addition to the foreign missionary 
forces of 20,000 men and women from the colleges of 
Christendom during a period of thirty years would be 
required. Of this number the colleges of the United 
States and Canada should probably furnish sixty per 
cent, or 12,000 new missionaries.' Assuming that this 
number would be required now, could they be spared? 
The colleges and universities of Canada have been able to 
afford many thousands of men for military service over- 
seas. Already, so the Council of Church Boards of Edu- 
cation estimates, some 40,000 American students have 
joined the colors. According to another estimate, seventy- 
five per cent of the men who were leaders of Christian 
work in American colleges in 1916-17 were in uniform 
by the following Christmas. The number of men stu- 
dents in Canada has been cut in half by the War. Two- 
thirds of the university men in Great Britain are in khaki ; 
in some institutions the proportion is even greater. More 
men have been contributed to the War by Oxford and 
Cambridge universities alone than the Student Volunteer 
Movement judged, when its Watchword was adopted, 
would be required within thirty years for the evangelizing 
of the world. Germany has been able to spare 45,000 
men from her universities for the trenches on her battle 
fronts. The French universities are without any men 
save those too young for military service and those dis- 
abled in the War. The universities of Belgium are all 
closed. In these nations there has been no withhold- 
ing of educated manhood on the ground that it could not 



^It is estimated that with the help of one foreign missionary to 
every 25,000 of the population the native forces in each non-Christian 
land, who must ultimately be the main evangelizing factor, are able 
to bring the Christian message adequately to their own nations. 
This is, of course, a rough estimate. 

^According to more recent estimates, such as that made in 1914 
by Mr. W. E. Doughty, 14,000 new missionaries from the United 
States and Canada would be needed to evangelize their share of 
the non-Christian world. See "The Call of the World," pp. 83-84. 



Call for a World Program in the Church 117 

be spared. The nations that are distributing bases of 
the Protestant missionary enterprise have poured their 
wealth of manhood into the destructive processes of War, 
and have bravely met the loss by death of many millions 
of their cherished sons. Shall the churches of Protestant 
North America demur if they are asked to spare one 
church member out of every 2,000/ and one Christian 
college student out of every twenty^ for the constructive 
missionary enterprise? Shall any Christian whimper and 
complain that the 1,999 church members would not be 
sufficient to perform the tasks, even the greatly increased 
and absorbing tasks, which will be before the Church 
at home, as well as support the one who would go on 
Christian service overseas, or that the nineteen college 
students who remain would be overwhelmed by the 
responsibilities of leadership in the nation because there 
was a twentieth, a gifted man or woman, who went out 
to help solve the problems of a needier nation? The 
resources of Christian nations in money power and man 
power have now been so abundantly demonstrated, that 
it will be stultifying hereafter for anyone to contend that 
it would involve too great a cost to proclaim through all 
the world the greatness of the love of Christ and the 
power of His cross. 

5. The spiritual resources of the Church are unlimited. 

In a previous chapter we surveyed some of the diffi- 
culties in the way of the evangelization of the whole world 
in our generation. If there were nothing to confront them 
but the unsupported resources of men, they would be 
formidable enough to make the strongest heart despair. 
But "our sufficiency is of God.'* Difficulties melt in His 
presence. In Him are those mighty, overcoming energies 
which accomplish the possible and the impossible with 



^The demand would not really be so great as this figure suggests, 
as the workers sent out would be distributed over a generation. 

^Dr. Mott says: "To furnish the number needed would take only 
one in twenty of the professing Christian students of the United 
States, Canada and Australasia during a period of twenty years." 
— "The Pastor and Modern Missions," pp. 156-157. 



ii8 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

equal readiness. "There is One with us/* says Dr. Speer, 
"to whom the impossible is His chief delight." Any 
arithmetical calculations we make of the numbers of men 
and the amounts of money required can be only very 
general and tentative. The real resources are with Him 
for the evangelizing and the redeeming of the world. 
But He has not been able to do "many mighty works" in 
the non-Christian lands, because of our unbelief as a 
Church. We have not possessed our possessions. While 
the years of the Christian era have gone by, God has 
been waiting to be honored by the faith of a generation 
that would call upon Him for really large outpourings 
of His power. Our fault has been that we have limited 
God by the trifling dimensions of our undertakings, by 
our failure to appropriate more than a meager supply 
of the superhuman resources that are unlocked to the 
faith of human agents and by our unreadiness to throw 
ourselves into the ministry of intercession in the world's 
behalf. 

God has honored this generation as He has never 
honored a generation before. He has thrown dazzling 
opportunities before it. He has flung wide open for it 
the doors of access to all parts of His world and has 
laid at its feet every possible advantage and facility. 
Through the significant happenings of the recent years, 
through the break-up of the old civilizations, and even 
through the shock and noise of the world's armed strife, 
His voice comes to us, "Remember ye not the former 
things, neither consider the things of old. Behold I will 
do a new thing."^ "Go ye, therefore, and make disciples 
of all the nations. ... I am with you."^ In His unerring 
wisdom He has chosen our generation of Christians tc 
face the responsibility of this decisive hour in the de- 
velopment of His program for the world. Was ever i 
Christian generation trustee of an opportunity so great: 
The mystery of this confidence we can never understand 
But we can and must act on it. We must prove worth] 

^Isaiah 43: 18. 
^Matthew 28: 19, 20. 



Call for a World Program in the Church 119 

of it. And for this we must possess in fact what is ours 
by promise. We must supply the conditions whereby there 
may be communicated to us those Hving energies that are 
our only confidence for so overwhelming a task. If the 
Christian Church of this generation would by faith lay 
claim to those dynamic forces and by obedience open her 
life for their coming, nothing could resist the triumphant 
sweep of her campaign of love among the needy nations 
of the world. 

V. This is the Generation for which We are Responsible, 

Apart from all the foregoing reasons for the evangeliz- 
ing of the entire world in this generation, there is the 
very simple fact that this is our generation. If we have any 
responsibility to give the Gospel to others, it must be a 
responsibility for those who are now living. It is a 
responsibility therefore which we cannot alienate. We 
cannot reach generations that are gone and only indirectly 
can we reach the generations yet to come. But we of this 
generation have the Gospel, while others of this genera- 
tion are without it. Our responsibility leads directly to 
them and later generations cannot share it with us. 

Obvious though this accountability appears, the Church 
has been slow to recognize it. A century and a quarter 
ago there were few Christians who were prepared to 
accept a responsibility for any part of the unevangelized 
world. When William Carey proposed to a meeting of 
Baptist ministers in England a discussion of the question, 
"The duty of Christians to attempt the spread of the Gos- 
pel among heathen nations," he was called *'a miserable 
enthusiast" In the Scottish General Assembly in 1796 
a petition to send the Gospel to the heathen was met 
by a motion that "to spread abroad a knowledge of the 
Gospel among barbarous and heathen nations seems to be 
highly preposterous, in so far as philosophy and learning 
must, in the nature of things, take the precedence ; and 
that while there remains at home a single individual with- 
out the means of religious knowledge, to propagate it 
abroad would be improper and absurd." It was in the 



I20 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

face of such opposition that the modern missionary move- 
ment began in Great Britain. 

In North America there were at that time few Chris- 
tians who recognized their responsibility for giving the 
Gospel to those who were then living without it. When 
in 1806 that little group of students at Williams College 
prayed in the shelter of a haystack and rose convinced 
that the obligation to give Christ to the non-Christians 
of their generation rested upon them and their fellow 
Christians who were then living, they were under no 
delusion that this conviction would meet with a general 
response in the Church of their day. Yet that prayer 
meeting led to the formation of the American Board. 
Other Foreign Mission Societies were organized and 
gradually the North American churches began to make 
missionary history. 

In 1886, a larger group of students, representing many 
colleges of the United States and Canada, were gathered 
at Mt, Hermon, Mass. There they faced the needs of 
those who in their generation were still without the 
Gospel. The claims of Christ upon them in behalf of the 
non-Christian world came vividly to that company as a 
binding obligation and then and there one hundred of them 
offered their lives for foreign service. This was the 
beginning of the Student Volunteer Movement. The mis- 
sionary fires kindled there spread through the colleges 
and into the churches and a new missionary awakening 
was begun. In 1888 the formal organization of the Move- 
ment was effected, and the Watchword was adopted, *The 
Evangelization of the World in this Generation." It was 
a startling idea to most Christians, and it was decried and 
even derided by some Christian leaders as ill-considered 
and visionary, the catchy slogan of a few irresponsible, 
if well-meaning, enthusiasts. 

That was thirty years ago. During the interval the 
missionary purpose has entered the lives of a rapidly in- 
creasing number of Christians, the Watchword^ has been 

^The evangelization of the world, i. e., such a presentation of the 
Gospel to all mankind as will make possible its intelligent accept- 



Call for a World Program in the Church 121 

soundly interpreted and better understood, and today 
Christian leaders are seldom heard to attack or even ques- 
tion it. Moreover, it has been accepted as a challenge, an 
inspiration and a guiding principle of life by many tfiou- 
sands of Christians in Anglo-Saxon America, in Protes- 
tant Europe, in South Africa, in Australia and a large 
number of mission lands. 

Again, in January, 1918, a company of students assembled 
in the Connecticut Valley at Northfield, Mass., to attend 
the Student Volunteer Conference. They were gathered 
from all sections of the United States and from Canada 
to consider together the immediate world situation facing 
the Christian students of North America and to estimate 
their present missionary responsibility. Immediately across 
the river was Mt. Hermon, where just a generation before 
the Movement had its birth, and the spell of that earlier 
gathering was upon the Conference. Some of the original 
one hundred volunteers were present. And as the delegates 
looked steadily and obediently at the conditions of the 
hour throughout the world, the Watchword seemed to 
take on a new significance and intensity and urgency. It 
is safe to say that they went back to their institutions 
with a deep, determined conviction that a demand, unusual 
and imperative, is upon the present Christian generation 
to convey to the non-Christian nations the message and 
spirit of Jesus Christ, so that He may transform their 
individual and national life and govern their international 
attitudes. 

How immensely worthy this ideal is, how satisfying 
and exhilarating ! It looks ahead to the day of a redeemed 
humanity, the day when not only the message of Christ 
will be given out everywhere, but when His spirit will 
prevail in all social relationships and direct every national 



ance, does not mean the Christianization of the world. True, the 
modern interpretation of the missionary errand of Christianity covers 
its social as well as individual application. But the evangelizing 
of the world is essential to its Christianization. The Gospel must 
be known before it can function. For a reasoned interpretation 
of the Watchword the reader is referred to Dr. Mott's 'The Evan- 
gelization of the World in this Generation." 



122 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

gesture and attitude towards other nations. The Watch- 
word explicitly calls for the former, but it assuredly im- 
plies the latter. 

A life organized around this governing aim is a poised, 
powerful, well-directed life. It is a life whose faith is 
fixed in the certainties of love's invincibility and the com- 
ing of Christ's Kingdom. It is a life centred in God's will 
for the world. It is a life that will count for something 
great in the service of humanity. It is a life for which 
there now abideth faith, hope, love, these three. If the 
number of such lives were multiplied, especially among 
college men and women, there would be no question of 
having enough thoroughly qualified volunteers to go forth 
with the message of life so that it could be intelligently 
and intelligibly brought to all of our generation who are 
still without it, nor would there be any question of there 
being behind these missionaries a loyal backing in material 
support and prevailing prayer. 

At the close of his book "The Decisive Hour of Chris- 
tian Missions," Dr. Mott utters these searching words : 
"It is indeed the decisive hour of Christian missions. It 
is the time of all times for Christians of every name to 
unite and with quickened loyalty and with reliance upon 
the living God, to undertake to make Christ known to all 
men, and to bring His power to bear upon all nations. 
It is high time to face this duty and with serious purpose 
to discharge it. Let leaders and members of the Church 
reflect on the awful seriousness of the fact that times and 
opportunities pass. The Church must use them or lose 
them. The sense of immediacy and the spirit of reality 
are the need of the hour. Doors open and doors shut 
again. Time presses. The living, the living, he shall 
praise Thee.' Let each Christian so resolve and so act 
that if a sufficient number of others will do likewise, all 
men before this generation passes away may have an 
adequate opportunity to know of Christ" 

This is the only generation we can reach. But we can 
reach it, and all of it, with the spirit and message of 
Christ. - To most of those who live contemporaneously 



Call for a World Program in the Church 123 

with us He is a stranger now. Most desperately they 
need Him. Though they do not know it, they long for 
Him for their freedom and enlightenment and salvation. 
They are waiting, as the generations before them have 
waited. Shall those who come after them wait too, be- 
cause we of this privileged generation of Christians have 
failed to go to them through wide open doors with gifts 
of healing and light and life? 

At Khartoum in Africa there is a statue of General 
Gordon facing not toward home but toward the desert 
and the great Sudan. Some lines written by a visitor on 
seeing this statue speak not only for the Sudan, largely 
unoccupied by Christian missionaries, but for the thou- 
sand million of our generation to whom the living Christ 
has not come. 

"The string of camels come in single file, 
Bearing their burdens o'er the desert sand; 
Swiftly the boats go plying on the Nile, 

The needs of men are met on every hand. 
But still I wait 
For the messenger of God who cometh late. 

**J see the cloud of dust rise in the plain, 

The measured tread of troops falls on the ear; 

The soldier comes the Empire to maintain, 
Bringing the pomp of war, the reign of fear. 

But still I wait; 

The messenger of Peace, he cometh late. 

"They set me looking o'er th^ desert drear, 

Where broodeth darkness as the deepest night. 

From many a mosque there comes the call to prayer; 
I hear no voice that calls on Christ for light. 

But still I wait 

For the messenger of Christ who cometh late." 



CHAPTER VI 

THE CALL FOR A FULL MOBILIZATION OF CHRISTIAN 

FORCES 

Half measures will not avail for any great task. The 
undertaking which we have been considering will be ac- 
complished by nothing less than the enlistment of the full 
strength of the Church. 

For the churches of Canada and the United States this 
means more than at first appears. In the years before the 
War the churches of the English-speaking world carried 
on four-fifths of the total missionary operations of 
Protestant Christendom. In all probability Anglo-Saxon 
Christianity will now have to increase its share. And as 
Great Britain will come out of the War more greatly 
weakened both in men and in money resources than the 
belligerent nations of North America, the churches of 
these two nations must now prepare to carry a larger 
proportion than ever of the entire missionary program. 

I. The War has Revealed the Possibilities of Thorough 
Mobilisation. 

History has not furnished a revelation of really scientific 
and thorough mobilization of a nation's resources to be 
compared with what some of the belligerent nations have 
accomplished during the present War. Germany, with 
characteristic thoroughness, a centralized and almost all- 
powerful government and long years of quiet preparation, 
stands easily first in completeness of mobilization. But 
some of the other nations engaged have not been far 
behind. Great Britain and France have marshalled their 
resources in a way that only unity of purpose, passionate 
conviction and organizing genius could accomplish. 
Canada, in common with the other British dominions, 
penetrating in a flash to the real issues of the struggle, 

124 



Mobilisation of Christian Forces 125 

did not wait till her aid was asked but leaped to the side 
of the mother country, put all petty undertakings in 
abeyance, called a truce in her family quarrels and threw 
herself with energ>^ into the conflict. With the exception 
of one province she compacted herself together in an 
all-embracing plan of organization for the matter in 
hand. 

The proverbial American genius for organization has 
found in the War an occasion large enough and great 
enough to call forth its powers in an unparalleled degree. 
With her passion for democracy fanned into flame, the 
United States has been willing to take measures seemingly 
inconsistent and undemocratic and subject herself to more 
paternalism in government than she had ever known be- 
fore. She found, as other nations found, that all the 
elements in her national life must be laid under tribute 
to the common end. She said, "This one thing I do." 
She set out to mobilize her industry, her capital, her 
transportation, her food, her fuel, her science, her man- 
power and in this way she is gathering up her maximum 
strength. 

In the process of mobilization the United States is 
learning, as Canada and other belligerents have learned, 
that the full weight of a nation's impact cannot be supplied 
until the common purpose takes a deep hold on individual 
life. This is more than a matter of a disciplined accep- 
tance of the inevitable, a reduction of luxuries, a popular 
economy in fuel and food, or a generous subscription to 
Victory Losltis and Liberty Loans. It is a matter of 
mobilizing the moral and religious resources of the nation, 
the thrice arming of those whose deepest convictions tell 
them that they have their quarrel just. It is only then 
that "doing one's bit" becomes a worthy contribution to 
the common fund of the nation's strength. Sir Thomas 
White, Canada's Minister of Finance, speaking in June, 
1917, on the Military Service Bill, said : 

No democracy ever puts forth its greatest effort until the reli- 
gious sentiment of democracy is enlisted. Take the War of the 
Secession in the United States. Read the second inaugural of 



126 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

Abraham Lincoln. Read Julia Ward Howe's *' Battle Hymn of the 
Republic." 

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; 
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath arc 
stored." 
The literature and poetry of that period breathe with religious 
fervor. You never get the strength of democracy until, in addi- 
tion to its material effort, there is put forth its spiritual effort. 
There must be self-sacrifice. There must be self-denial. There 
must be the mobilization of the spiritual energies of the nation. 

II. The Church is Capable of Similar Mobilisation for Her 
World Campaign. 

Few probably have realized to what extent this thorough- 
going mobilization might be duplicated by the Church for 
her world campaign. Obviously, we are not now on a 
war footing as a body of Christians. We have main- 
tained an ordained Protestant minister at home for every 
507 of the population, and have sent abroad a sufficient 
number of workers, clerical and lay, including the wives 
of missionaries, to supply one to every fifty or sixty thou- 
sand of the non-Christian peoples.^ *We are cared for by 
doctors to the extent of one for every 647 of our popula- 
tion, and as Protestant Christians have furnished non- 
Christian lands with one for about every million.^ Not 
much evidence in all this of a flaming Crusader spirit in 
the Church, even though we sing lustily, *'Like a mighty 
army, moves the Church of God"! While the foreign 
missionary contributions of our churches amount to only 
$1.22 per member, and a large proportion of the member- 
ship are not reported as giving anything at all, the Church 
hardly seems to be ablaze with a missionary passion. It 
is not surprising to hear d missionary as he comes back 
from Turkey and looks squarely at a few facts like these 
declare that the Church must get on a war basis or give 



*Even considering the fact that ultimately the greater part of 
the Christian work in the mission field must be done through native 
agents, this disproportion presents an indictment and a challenge. 

^Exclusive of Japan, the only mission land which has developed 
a strong medical profession. 



Mobilisation of Christian Forces 127 

up her battle hymns.^ Missionaries face to face with 
immense difficulties tell us with one voice that the real 
difficulty is not at the front but at the home base.^ In 
the words of a catchy phrase of the day, "what happens 
'over there' depends on what happens over here." 

The Church should emulate the nation in the mobilization 
of her resources. Not only can she parallel the process^ 
but there is much in it which she can capture for her 
world campaign. We have said that the nation is mobiliz- 
ing moral and spiritual resources. But a quality is not 
one thing in the nation and another thing in the Church. 
"Loyalty/' says L. P. Jacks in the January, 1918, Atlantic 
Monthly, "has no definite programme, and yet it is the 
mother of all the programmes that lead to good results. 
. . . Loyalty is growing, and nothing could give us a fairer 
promise of a general resurrection in the better tendencies 
of human life."^ All the fine qualities that have recently 
been awakened in the lives of men and women are awake 
for any high and ennobling cause that will ^command them. 
They are awake for the enterprise of spreading Christ's 
Kingdom throughout the earth. There is every reason why 
a wave of patriotism in that Kingdom should now sweep 
across the Church of Christ at least as holy and compelling 
as the patriotism that is capturing our national life in the 
mass. "There is a contagion of courage as well as of 
disease. Faith catches fire from faith, as well as fear 
from fear. The average man finds himself unable to 
resist the torrent of valor and self-denial and self-sacri- 
fice."* 



*See pamphlet, *'The Church on a War Basis," by S. Ralph 
Harlow. 

*A Canadian soldier in Kitchener's army wrote from a hospital 
a month before he died: "Why docs our Church keep Foreign ]Mis-^ 
sions so much in the background? Why is it that I was left so 
long a scoffer? I do not blame any mortal. I am saying that 
something is wrong with the scheme of things which fails to put 
the whole world for Christ right in the forefront as the battlecry 
of the Christian Church." 

^Pp. 212, 213. 

*R. T. Stevenson, "Missions Versus Militarism," p. 43. 



128 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

Let us consider now how national mobilization may be 
duplicated in the Church. 

I. Intelligence should be mobilized. The nations are 
giving great attention to this factor. They are spreading 
information through the entire school systems. They have 
levied tribute on the pulpits for the same purpose. They 
are utilizing the press from the largest city daily to the 
smallest rural weekly. They have secured the cooperation 
of the myriad motion picture houses which display patriotic 
bulletins, cartoons and official war pictures several times 
a day. The American Government has enlisted an army 
of 20,000 effective speakers, *'Four-Minute Men," as they 
are called, who spread information and enthusiasm in 
theatres and elsewhere throughout the land. The govern- 
ments maintain mammoth publicity bureaus to issue a 
multitude of pamphlets, and in general to direct the cam- 
paign of promoting intelligence in the public mind. 

How meager in comparison are the Churches efforts to 
inform her membership regarding the world enterprise 
of missions. The foundation of the whole undertaking 
is intelligence. Activity, generosity, prayer, all wait upon 
knowledge, and yet the overwhelming majority of church 
members are pitifully ignorant on this large, practical, 
highly interesting question. It is true that many of these 
Christians are provincial, and do not care to know about 
the wider activities of the Church. But it is also true 
that the efforts to give information are inadequate. While 
many strong missionary magazines and pamphlets are being 
written each year, the output of missionary material should 
be improved in variety, quality and appearance, and, more 
important still, the use of this material should be promoted 
with greater vigor. In local congregations the giving of 
missionary information should not be limited to a Mission- 
ary Sunday or a monthly missionary sermon. It should 
be a recurring element in the pastor's sermons and prayer 
meeting addresses, and should be conveyed through the 
Sunday School, the Young People's Society and the other 
organizations of the Church. A program of Mission Study 
classes, covering all ages, should be promoted in every 



Mobilisation of Christian Forces 129 

congregation and supplemented by a campaign of in- 
dividual missionary reading, a bulletin board, illustrated 
lectures and other methods. 

In colleges and universities similar methods should be 
employed/ Especially should groups be formed, by what- 
ever name they may be called, for missionary study and 
discussion. They should be under capable leaders and 
should be sufficient in number to cover the whole student 
body. The aim should be to have every Christian student 
leave college an intelligent, enthusiastic exponent of the 
missionary enterprise. To accomplish this no method is 
so successful as the Mission Study group, though many 
other methods, such as curriculum instruction in missions, 
are highly serviceable. While this purpose should prevail 
in all institutions of higher learning, it is particularly neces- 
sary in the theological seminaries. A congregation can 
hardly rise to a high degree of missionary intelligence 
if it has not a missionary pastor; and, in the main, mis- 
sionary pastors are produced in the theological seminaries, 
which are the Officers* Training Camps of the missionary 
campaign. How important it is that every seminary grad- 
uate should come to his first congregation equipped with 
a richly furnished missionary mind, eager to inform and 
arouse his people for the spread of the Kingdom. 

2. Leadership should be mobilized. The nations have 
been alert to do this. They have called upon men of in- 
fluence and outstanding ability for service in various direc- 
tions. Reference has been made already to the enlisting 
of teachers, ministers and "Four-Minute Men." Men have 
been taken from the most important regular occupations 
and pressed into some emergency service. Pastors have 
been called from their congregations for publicity work. 
Secretaries of missionary organizations have been drafted 
for important duties in Quartermasters' offices and else- 
where. Railroad presidents, heads of industrial concerns 



*See pamphlets "The Organization of Mission Study Among 
Students," ''Missionary Meetings," "Missionary Programs for School- 
boys," "The Missionary Life of the Theological Seminary," and 
other publications of the Student Volunteer Movement. 



130 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

and college professors have been asked to drop their 
usual work to fill temporary positions under the Govern- 
ment. Foreign missionaries unable to return to their 
fields have done duty along food conservation and other 
lines. The United States asked the head of its Belgian 
Relief Commission to become its Food Commissioner, and 
the head of a college to become Fuel Commissioner. The 
president of the great National City Bank was taken to 
Washington to serve the Government at $1.00 a year and 
many other men of prominence and ability are there giving 
their time and talents on the same salary. Leading artists 
have been called to perfect the art of camouflage on sea 
and land. Scientists and inventors have been set apart 
in laboratories to give their best to the nation. Club 
women, social leaders, women of national and local promi- 
nence have assumed important duties, that demand all of 
their time, at the call of the Government, the Red Cross 
and the Young Women^s Christian Association. Financiers, 
ministers and captains of industry have turned aside from 
their pressing occupations to serve the War Work Council 
of the Young Men's Christian Association. Leadership 
in every department of the nation's life has been mobilized 
on a colossal scale. 

Can the Church not mobilize her leadership in a similar 
way for her world campaign? Where are the necessary 
forces of leadership to be found? First, of course, in 
the Foreign Mission Board rooms. In these offices there 
is a secretarial staff of men and women that in devotion, 
energy, executive ability, administrative gifts and the 
power to inspire confidence and command a following, 
might well be the envy of great corporations. The Church 
is rich in its missionary secretaryship. But for the larger 
missionary programs that will now be projected in most 
of the church communions, there will have to be an en- 
largement of the existing staff. For the new positions 
that may be created, even the minor positions, none but 
men, both ministers and laymen, and women of high 
qualities of leadership should be chosen. For an under- 
taking of such dimensions and such importance, each 



Mobilization of Christian Forces 131 

church must be bold to demand and expect the best fitted 
men and women in its entire communion, regardless of 
any minor claims that may be upon them. And in the 
special missionary campaigns that from time to time are 
launched in the various denominations, why should not 
the best talent in the Church, such as college presidents 
and heads of large commercial and industrial concerns,, 
who have a missionary passion, be drafted by the mission- 
ary societies for emergency service? In these coming 
years the problems of expansion, of reconsideration and 
rearrangement in the missionary work of the churches 
will make exacting demands on the leaders of this work 
such as only the ablest among consecrated Christian minds 
will be able to meet/ 

In the local congregation the pastor is the logical leader. 
As has been pointed out, he is ''the key to the mission- 
ary problem." In the main, the forward movement of 
the Christian Church for carrying Christianity into all 
parts of the world will stand or fall with its ministry. 
Now is the time for every minister to grasp this fact and 
gird himself for the greatest undertaking to which he has 
ever put his hand. Now, too, is the time for him to 
commandeer the services of the men and women in his 
congregation who possess energy, vision, ability and in- 
fluence, and who with him might constitute such an inner 
circle of leadership in missionary intelligence and liber- 
ality and intercession as would make of that church a 
productive munitions plant. Speaking before a laymen's 
gathering in Nova Scotia, the Honorable N. W. Rowel!, 
K. C, President of the Privy Council of Canada, declared 
that the churches should ^'change their whole attitude and 
recognize that this work is the supreme business of the 
Church." "It is not only nation building," he said, "it 
is empire building for our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 
It is a mighty problem, world-wide in its sweep, and calls 
for the highest display of genuine devotion and self- 

^See article "The Training of the Missionary," by J. S. Brought 
in The East and the West, January, 191 8. 



132 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

sacrifice by the brainiest and wisest men of the world. 
It is into this noblest of all services and most wonderful 
of all works that we as laymen are called."^ 

The same is true of every college, university and theo- 
logical seminary. The Christian organizations in these 
institutions must recognize this ''noblest of all services" 
as their highest objective and plan their work accordingly. 
Often it has been true that the missionary leadership of 
an institution has been vested in men or women of second 
quality, who were indolent or inefficient, who were unable 
to perceive the dignity and high claims of their task, or 
who did not command the confidence and cooperation of 
their fellow-students. Where this has been the case, the 
missionary plans of that administration either were wof ully 
inadequate or were not carried through successfully. A 
task so comprehensive in its claims upon every Christian 
student on the campus should be under the direction of 
the ablest and most influential students. 

The strategy of this course in the college world lies in 
the part that the colleges and seminaries may play in 
furnishing missionary leadership for the churches. There 
are thousands of men and women throughout the churches 
today who, if they are enlisted at all, are merely privates 
in the missionary ranks, but who, had they been reached 
in college by an aggressive and competently led mission- 
ary program, would now be holding rank as recruiting 
sergeants and captains and generals. Under God, there 
may be such a missionary uprising among the students of 
this college generation as will go far to supply the de- 
mand for missionary leadership in the churches in the 
coming three decades. Toward that result the plans of 
Christian students today should be directed. 

3. Material resources should be mobilized. The nations 
have been doing it. When Canada decided to enter the 
War she staked her material fortune on it. The United 
States did the same. Their Governments went to the 



*See pamphlet, "Will Canada Evangelize Her Share of the 
World?" by Newton W. Rowell, p. 24. 



Mobilisation of Christian Forces 133 

public for the necessary military and naval expenditures 
— first, in the form of taxes, and second, in the form of 
loans that have already amounted to many billions of 
dollars. The assumption was that the War is the under- 
taking of every man, woman and child in the nation, that 
all are profoundly interested in it and are ready to show 
their interest by paying the costs involved. There were 
nine and a half million subscribers to the second Liberty 
Loan in the United States in October, 1917, and a half 
a million subscribers to the Victory Loan in Canada in 
November, 1917. The Governments assume, too, that 
spontaneously the financial strength of their citizens will 
be thrown into Patriotic Funds, Red Cross and other 
benevolences connected with the War. National finances 
are for the time on a war basis. 

The Church of Jesus Christ must mobiHze her financial 
power if her world campaign is to be waged successfully. 
Large enough demands have never yet been made upon 
the money resources of Christians. Christians are ready 
today to be heroic in their giving. An indication of this 
is found in the dimensions of Canada's recurring cam- 
paigns for war benevolences, such as the Red Cross and 
Patriotic Fund campaign in January, 1918. Toronto, 
which, in common with other Canadian cities, seems unable 
to drain its liberality dry, w-as asked for three million 
dollars in this last campaign and gave an extra $300,000 
for good measure. Canada has now contributed over 
twenty million dollars to the Red Cross and her Patriotic 
Fund has reached thirty million dollars. The Young Men's 
Christian ^Association went to the public of the United 
States in November, 1917, for thirty-five million dollars, 
and the response was over fifty million. Dr. Mott said 
that this sum **greatly exceeds the united annual budgets 
of the Home and Foreign Missions Boards of all the 
churches in America. It constitutes the largest single 
offering to a Christian cause ever made at a given time 
in the history of Christianity." The fact is, the Christians 
of our two nations must wonder why some real financial 
challenges are not thrown down to them for the expan- 



134 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

sion of the Kingdom to which they belong. As has been 
said above, one great Church is now to ask of its mem- 
bers each year for their world program four times as 
much as they have contributed on the basis of the old 
program. Why should not all the churches make similar 
large demands for their foreign work, not, of course, re- 
ducing the demands for local and national work, but 
scaling them up correspondingly? 

This is more than a material demand. It is the tangible 
form of a spiritual demand to which men and women are 
today ready to respond. The rank and file of the public 
is more ready for great challenges to unselfish action than 
they have been in many decades. If this is true, the 
Church will be found unfaithful if she fails to call her 
members to a new and great adventure in world redemp- 
tion and to ask boldly for such gifts of money as will 
show concretely that men are setting Christ's Kingdom 
above selfish interest. 

In the faith that a readiness to do something large- 
hearted, beyond all previous times, existed among stu- 
dents, there was set before American college men and 
women^ last fall an undertaking to raise a million dollars 
for the relief of prisoners of war and for kindred ob- 
jects. Nothing on that scale had ever been attempted be- 
fore. The students and faculty members responded with 
pledges for $1,500,000. It was an outburst of idealism 
and unselfishness beyond all precedent. At the Northfield 
Conference, the financial part of the forward program 
agreed upon involved the contributing by American and 
Canadian students and professors during 1918-19 of $500,- 
000 for foreign missions,^ in addition to amounts to be 
raised for war relief funds. This is a goal that can 
be reached only by genuine unselfishness. For some it 



^The plan did not include Canadian students, who were already 
giving generously to similar funds. 

-The largest sum raised for missions in previous years was 
$247,424, in 1916-17, and included gifts to college missionary funds 
from alumni and other friends. The present program represents 
only personal gifts from students and professors. 



Mobilisation of Christian Forces 135 

will undoubtedly mean heroic sacrifice. But that spirit 
is in the colleges, ready to be called upon for noble 
purposes. The Students' Friendship War Fund demon- 
strated it. It would have been poor psychology and poor 
spiritual strategy not to summon that spirit to an equally 
high endeavor in the next college year. The new pro- 
gram will allow Christian students to show in terms o^ 
the tangible that they wish to put themselves at Christ s 
disposal in a sacrificial way for the enlargement of His 
Kingdom in the world. 

If the money resources of Christians are to be mobilized 
in any adequate way for the foreign missionary work of 
the Church, four things are necessary, (i) The needs 
of the Kingdom of God beyond our shores must share 
more largely in the total benefactions of most Christians. 
The needs at our own doors demand not less than has 
been contributed, but vastly more. At the same time, it 
is to be remembered that the greater needs for which we 
are responsible are not at home, but abroad. Many 
churches are coming to feel that they are not justified 
in spending more on their local requirements than on the 
needs outside their congregational bounds. It would be 
a reasonable and wholesome standard for most churches 
to adopt. In a number of colleges the local budget of 
the Christian Association is smaller by far than the 
missionary offerings of the students. This should be the 
case in every institution. Many colleges and many con- 
gregations now provide the support of a missionary; but 
their number might be multiplied several times. 

(2) The number of givers should be greatly increased. 
In a church it should include at least all who are on the 
roll of membership and in a college at least all of the 
Christian students on the campus. Many of the patriotic 
appeals of the hour are based on the proposition that 
since some are giving their lives the least that all of the 
others can do is to give their money. As a poster in the 
recent Canadian Red Cross campaign put it crisply, ''Some 
fight, some pay." It is the highwayman's demand of 
''money or your life." It should be rigorously maintained 



136 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

that since some Christian men and women are leaving all 
and putting their lives into the campaign of winning the 
world for Christ, all other Christians, to whom equally 
the cause belongs, should pay in terms of money. 

(3) The giving should be systematic. Experience is 
abundant to show that systematic missionary contributions 
produce a much larger fund and bring in an evener flow 
the spiritual reactions that come to the giver, than in the 
case of spasmodic gifts. 

(4) The giving should be based on a sense of steward- 
ship.^ We come here to the springs of action. Nothing is 
so likely to bring a generous and sustained financial 
response from men and women as a sense of trusteeship 
under God. And no giving will bring back into one's 
life such abundant blessing as the giving that comes up 
out of a recognition of God's absolute ownership of one's 
self and substance as a part of His estate. Giving of 
this sort is motived on the will of God. It is a normal 
and inevitable fruitage of Christian discipleship, and, 
taken together with the other fruits of the consecrated 
life, it supplies a basis for the growth of the Kingdom. 

4. Man power must be mobilized. This our nations have 
been doing. For her army and navy the United States 
took the shortcut of conscription. Canada, having tried 
voluntary enlistment, came to conscription in the end. 
Both nations also have been mobilizing their man power 
for service at the home base. They have been trying 
to direct currents of men and women to the points of 
greatest need, such as shipyards, munitions factories, mines 
and farms. The theory on which they base these efforts 
is that the War is the affair of every man and woman. 

So the Church must act on the assumption that her 
world campaign is the affair of every Christian, and en- 
deavor to bring to every individual in her membership a 
sense of personal responsibility. First of all, there must 
be enlisted for overseas service enough weM-qualified men 
and women to carry the message of Christ to every part 
of the non-Christian world. With but rare exceptions 
these workers must come from the colleges and theo- 



Mobilisation of Christian Forces 137 

logical seminaries. The time is ripe to enlist them in un- 
paralleled numbers. The same idealism that is ready to 
offer money is ready to offer life. The same spirit that 
has half emptied the Canadian colleges of their men^ 
should avail to bring volunteers on both sides of our com- 
mon border-line for the foreign service of the Church. 
Surely there will be no holding back. We think of the 
tens of thousands of American and Canadian students 
who have thrilled at the opportunity to give their lives 
to the nation's cause, and of the tens of thousands be- 
sides whose souls are restless within them because they 
cannot go. The spirit is in the colleges, the spirit of 
vollmteering, the spirit that leaps to the place of need 
and difficulty and opportunity. If it follows the flag, 
will it not follow the Cross? Surely there will now be 
volunteers enough for the King's overseas contingent. 

The Foreign Mission Boards of the United States and 
Canada are now calling for workers to fill upwards of a 
thousand positions in various mission fields. As the 
policies of these Boards develop in the next few years, 
yet larger numbers of qualified missionary candidates 
will be called for. It will be vain for any students to 
wait till these calls come before they volunteer for foreign 
service. No time is to be lost, if prospective mission- 
aries are to secure the necessary equipment for their life 
work. They should volunteer now if they would be pre- 
pared when the larger demands are made by the Mission 
Boards. 

Moreover, the offering of life for this service should 
not be dependent on the definite demands which the 
Church makes on the colleges and seminaries for mis- 
sionary candidates. The real call is to be found in the 
non-Christian world's need for Christ and Christ's need 



^It is reported that the attendance at the universities, colleges 
and theological seminaries of Canada is about fifty per cent of the 
normal registration. In some institutions it is only thirty per cent. 
It is significant that in some universities, when the new Conscription 
Act came into force, not one student was taken, as all who would 
come under that Act had already enlisted. 



138 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

for men and women to take Him to the non-Christian 
world. Let those to whom this call makes special ap- 
peal heed it now and enlist. What would more effectively 
challenge the Church to an immense expansion of her for- 
eign missionary work than that a large body of earnest, 
capable students should dedicate their lives to service 
in the foreign field and should formally offer themselves 
to the Mission Boards for this holy errand? The fires 
kindled in these lives would spread rapidly and the 
Church would be inspired to a new standard of missionary 
endeavor. If that group of students at Williams College 
in 1806, or that other company of students at Mt. Hermon 
eighty years later, had waited before offering their lives 
until the churches should call upon the colleges for a mis- 
sionary uprising, the cause of Christ in the non-Christian 
world would have been seriously delayed. Who knows 
but in the providence of God the great missionary awaken- 
ing that should now sweep through the churches is to be 
stimulated by a large offering of life by college men and 
women ? 

Surely, too, there will be no holding back by parents. 
Down into distant pages of history there will go the 
story of how fathers and mothers in these stern days took 
their hands off the sons who wanted to go out and fight 
and endure hardship and come back or not come back. 
Mr. Choate tells of a friend of his, who wrote him about 
her four sons, three of whom, had gone into the army 
and one into the navy. Of the three one was dead, one 
wounded, one a prisoner. But in her letter this brave 
English woman spoke of being "proud that we have been 
able to devote all of our sons to the cause." That 
spirit is duplicated in hundreds of thousands of parents 
today. Surely they or other parents will not object, but 
will count it all joy when their sons and daughters tell 
them that they have heard the call of the King for 
workers among the darkened and oppressed and suffering 
peoples of the earth, and that they have answered the 
call with the offer of their lives. 

But to mobilize the man power of the Church means 



Mobilisation of Christian Forces 139 

far more than the enlistment of a large missionary force 
such as we would not have dreamed of five years ago. 
It involves the enlistment of a supporting constituency 
that will be fully adequate to an advance missionary 
program. And a supporting constituency will be inade- 
quate that does not include the full membership of organ- 
ized Christianity. The nation calls upon its last citizen 
to make his definite contribution to the winning of the 
War. The demand of the Church for its world campaign 
should be equally embracing. Over in China the Chris- 
tians have been alert to do this very thing. 

As the Great War has inspired and emphasized the appeal of 
national leaders for the utmost possible ^ self-sacrifice and definite 
service on the part of every single individual, so that call has been 
sounding forth in China — as also in other countries — that every 
Christian church member should be enlisted and prepared to take 
some definite, regular and permanent part in the great work of 
spreading the Gospel amongst all classes of people. This remains 
the leading idea of the present report — the call for regular and 
continuous universal service, and the spiritual preparation for an 
adequate response to this call. — "China Mission Year Book," 191 7, 
p. 338. 

The churches of Canada and the United States should 
not be less ready than the Church in China to sound this 
note of individual responsibility so that every Christian 
in its membership cannot fail to hear. In colleges where 
only part of the student body has carried any sense of 
missionary responsibility, the aim now should be to bring 
this conviction home to every Christian man and woman 
on the campus. The world enterprise of the Church 
must be backed by the intelligent conscience of its entire 
membership. 

5. Intercession must be mobilized. Our nations have 
not hesitated to do this. People of all creeds are called 
upon to pray for divine guidance to be given their rulers, 
for the welfare and safekeeping of the soldiers and the 
sailors, and for victory to rest upon the arms of the 
Allies. The clergy, Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jew- 
ish, are regarded by the Governments as immensely useful 
agents in enlisting the intercession of their congregations. 



I40 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

The Church must be mobilized to pray for precisely the 
same things in her world campaign. She must marshal 
the intercessions of her membership that divine guidance 
may be given the men and women who hold the responsi- 
bility for developing and executing her missionary policies, 
and whose sense of burden and strain they have been 
all too hesitant to disclose; that the missionaries of the 
Cross may be preserved in health and may be sustained 
in their loneliness and deprivations and difficulties ; that 
victory may be given to the enterprise in the winning of 
multitudes to the Christian faith, in the guiding and 
dynamizing of the Church in the mission field and in 
the penetrating of the spirit of Jesus into the whole life 
of non-Christian nations. 

How slow we are to grasp the fact that without super- 
human leverage the missionary load will never be lifted. 
Jesus recognized this and counselled His followers to 
rest their confidence in prayer. It was indeed the only 
missionary method He proposed. "Pray ye therefore the 
Lord of the harvest." He did not need to caution us not 
to neglect conferences and committees and movements 
and special campaigns, for He knew that the human mind 
would be ready enough to devise these agencies. But 
"He knew what was in man," and recognized that in our 
self-sufficiency we would be liable to neglect the one essen- 
tial factor. How tragic is our error in that we multiply 
and perfect these other methods and give relatively little 
time or attention to the spreading and deepening of the 
habit of missionary intercession. Of what value will 
these other methods be which we have just been consider- 
ing apart from prayer? Intelligence, for example. Mis- 
sionary intelligence that does not lead to prayer can have 
little value; indeed, all our added knowledge, if it does 
not move us to carry on our hearts before the throne of 
God the problems it • has uncovered to us, will prove a 
peril. The giving of money will not be very liberal, or 
enthusiastic, or sustained, nor will it be productive of 
reflex benefits to the giver or freighted with the empower- 
ing blessing of God, if it is not coupled with missionary 



Mobilisation of Christian Forces 141 

intercession. The organization of the enterprise, however 
perfect mechanically, will be only mechanical and dead 
unless it is energized by the dynamic of prayer. 

How may we develop this supremely important factor 
in the missionary enterprise? In colleges and theo- 
logical seminaries prayer for missions might be developed 
in chapel services, in the meetings of the Christian organi- 
zations in the institution, in Mission Study classes and 
also in small groups, that could be gathered in dormitories 
or fraternity houses for this express purpose. The Cycle 
of Power of the Student Volunteer Movement might be 
much more w^idely and intelligently used. Pastors might 
make prayer for the missionary work of the Church a 
more prominent element in congregational worship. At 
frequent intervals, they might turn the midw^eek prayer 
meeting into a gathering for missionary prayer, bringing 
to the attention of the Christians present some immedi- 
ate needs of the enterprise as revealed by reports from 
the Mission Board rooms, the latest issues of missionary 
periodicals or a letter from some missionary, and devot- 
ing the meeting largely to united prayer with reference 
to those needs. 

But the great potency of missionary intercession is 
developed in the individual prayer life of Christian men 
and women. Each of us must enter more fully into his 
own inheritance of obligation and privilege and power 
by becoming an effective prayer agent. The importance 
of this should be brought home convincingly to each Chris- 
tian student in the college, each individual member of the 
congregation. In this connection wide use should be 
made of effective literature on the subject, such as the 
pamphlets "Intercessors : The Primary Need," by Dr. John 
R. Mott, and "Prayer and Missions," by Dr. Robert E. 
Speer. Without question the supreme need of the hour 
in the world campaign of the Church is the mobilization 
of her prayer resources. The key to the power house 
is in the hands of the people of God. "He can do it if 
we will." 

Along such lines, the Church of Jesus Christ may mobil- 



142 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

ize the full strength of her resources and so rise to the 
heights of a great international emergency both of oppor- 
tunity and of need. 

III. The World Campaign of the Church Deserves the 
Full Mohilization of Christian Strength. 

1. Because of the dimensions of the undertaking and its 
manifold difficulties. The resources that are in the hands 
of the Church's membership should be requisitioned on 
a scale that is commensurate with a world undertaking. 
Those Christians who have accepted a responsibility for 
Christianizing conditions across the seas should realize 
the inadequacy of the old scale to accomplish so immense 
and arduous a task and those who have never recognized 
any such responsibility should be enlisted in a convinced 
and whole-hearted participation in the missionary pro- 
gram of the Church. In view of its vast proportions the 
undertakings demands a marshalling of the forces no less 
sweeping than this. 

It should be repeated that this is not a question of call- 
ing aside the energies and gifts and prayers of Christians 
from responsibilities nearer home. A man is not asked 
to be a poor father when he is asked to become a good 
neighbor, nor is it assumed that he will be a less helpful 
neighbor when he is urged to undertake large civic or 
national responsibilities. The clearer recognition he has 
of his national obligation, the more useful he will be to 
his community, and if a new spirit of kindliness and 
serviceableness in his community relationships possesses 
his life he becomes a better husband and father. By the 
same token the man who perceives clearly his obliga- 
tions for the welfare of individuals and societies at the 
other end of the world has a keen discernment of his 
obligations to his own nation and immediate community. 
The greatest challenge that can be set before Christian 
discipleship today is the task of taking the Christian mes- 
sage and the Christian spirit to all parts of the world 
into which they have not yet entered. If a widespread 
response will come to that challenge there will be a new 



Mobilisation of Christian Forces 143 

access of Christian energy for the other undertakings 
of the Church. 

2. Because of its urgency. Our nations would not have 
been justified in the wholesale mobilization of their re- 
sources, if the full strength of those resources were not 
needed at once. The necessity of mobilizing the full 
strength of Christianity for its world campaign is also 
an immediate necessity. The utmost that the Church is 
able and competent to do at any one time is the meas- 
ure of what she should do now. The opportunities of 
the hour cannot wait to be seized. The present needs 
of the lands without Christ cannot wait to be met. The 
present generation of non-Christians cannot wait to be 
evangelized. For our own souls' sake we who have Christ 
now cannot wait to share Him with others. And must 
Christ wait to "see of the travail of His soul and be 
satisfied"? A new hour has struck in the unfolding of 
the divine purpose for mankind, and it is an imperative 
summons to the entire membership and the full energy 
of the Church. 

We cannot for a moment allow the War to interfere 
with the most liberal plans for enlargement of our mis- 
sionary activities or to interrupt our undertakings even 
during the years of disturbance. The London Times 
recently deprecated any disposition to retrench the for- 
eign missionary work of the Church or to postpone its 
expansion. 

The prudent policy for an army hard pressed is to shorten its 
lines. It may be assumed that the Church is hard pressed, both in 
men and in material; its wisdom, therefore, would appear to lie 
in a bold shortening of the lines. . . . But the Church with one 
voice has rejected this logic. . . . The unpardonable sin for a 
modern man is to despair of the human family, or to demand a 
safety for himself or his people which is not offered to all. We 
are not saved, it has been well said, except in a saved race. 

The Church, believing, as it must do, that in its Gospel there 
is a sure spiritual foundation for mankind, cannot limit its vision 
or its service. Nor can it do its work piecemeal; it cannot finish 
its task in Europe and afterwards begin in Asia. ''Throughout Asia 
there is in process a complete transformation of social institutions, 
habits, standards and beliefs. The movement is unceasing; it will 



144 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

as little wait on our convenience as the tides of the sea." The 
Church indeed, so far from thinking that the missionary enterprise 
can be delayed, is stricken by remorse to know that it is late, 
almost too late, with the offer of a faith to which all the spiritual 
strivings of the East have moved. . . . There has now come to the 
seers a vision of nations accepting as a basis of their life the spirit- 
ual values of the Gospel. They read the missionary enterprise in 
terms of the statesmanship which alone can be tolerated in the 
coming age, the statesmanship which thinks internationally and 
takes into its range the whole world. The vision glows before the 
Church of the day when nations shall come to the Light, and kings 
to the brightness of His appearing. 



The Prime Minister of Canada, Sir Robert L. Borden, 
maintains that this is no time for retrenchment, but rather 
for expansions of missionary work. "I am convinced," 
he says, "that never has there been a greater responsibility 
laid both upon the Church generally and upon the various 
missionary movements than at the present time. The task 
which will confront these bodies, especially during the 
period following the War, will be a tremendous one; 
but I am convinced that they will welcome it rather as an 
opportunity, and that every effort will be made not 
merely to sustain the record of past years, but to make 
such an advance as will meet in some adequate measure 
the crying need of stricken humanity for those ministra- 
tions which it is the duty and the privilege of the Church 
to offer." 

President Wilson voiced a similar conviction, when, in 
a recent letter, he said : "I think it would be a real 
misfortune, a misfortune of lasting consequence, if the 
missionary program for the world should be interrupted. 
... I for one hope that there may be no slackening or 
recession of any sort." 

3. Because of the aim in view. The hearty response 
with which all classes of the people have met the efforts 
of our nations to mobilize their full strength has been 
due not so much to the colossal proportions and immense 
difficulties of the undertaking as to the high quality of 
the end in view. So in the world undertaking of the 
Church, the claims of its majestic purpose carry a stronger 



Mobilisation of Christian Forces 145 

appeal than the claims of its large dimensions and difficult 
problems. 

If the Canadian and American nations can call forth 
so enthusiastic and widespread a public commitment to 
the cause for which they fight, may the Church not expect 
a similar response throughout her membership in behalf 
of the cause of her world campaign? And after all do 
the aims not run on parallel lines? And do they not 
make their appeal to the same qualities of mind and 
heart? The man who puts everything of himself into 
the campaign to give the Christian message to the whole 
world is the sort of man who will put all that he has 
into the present War for righteousness and liberty through- 
out the world. Student Volunteers for foreign missions in 
the colleges have been the readiest, in Britain, in Canada 
and in the United States, to volunteer for military service. 
The sons of missionaries have enlisted in large numbers.* 
Conversely, may we not expect that men whose answer 
is so ready to the call of the nation have an answer ready 
to the call of the world campaign of the Kingdom of 
God? 

We have altogether underrated the forces that might 
have been marshalled to so great a cause as the world 
program of Christianity. If the true nature of that cause 
is brought before the Christian college men and women 
of today, and a ringing call made for volunteers to go 
out to the frontiers of the Kingdom, there should be 
such a response on the part of able and devoted students 
as will crowd the ranks of the Foreign Missionary Legion 
of the Christian Church and keep it up to full strength. 

The same is true of the supporting constituency. The 
battlefields tell no more stirring tales of heroism than 
the communities from which the soldiers have come. 
How many of the service flags that hang in our windows 
could tell of hearts within that are aching but that rejoice 
in the privilege of sacrifice. When word came to Ports- 

^According to The Presbyterian Record, January, 1918, every son 
of a Canadian Presbyterian missionary who is of fighting age has 
enlisted. 



146 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

mouth that one of its boats had been torpedoed and had 
gone down with all hands, the wives of the seamen hid 
their tears and sang together the National Anthem of 
England. After a costly Zeppelin raid on East London, 
the women from that part of the city begged Parliament 
not to withdraw one airplane from the front in order to 
strengthen the home defences. M. Jusserand, the French 
Ambassador at Washington, in speaking at a dinner in 
New York on February 6, 1917, told of the peasants in 
Brittany who, when the tolling of church bells announced 
the outbreak of war, went up into their steeples and 
changed the tolling into joyous carols. Up and down the 
cities and villages of Canada there is that rugged, heroic, 
self-sacrificing spirit that will give to the limit and then 
give more for a Cause that to them is glorious and com- 
manding. 

This other Cause, is it less glorious and commanding? 
Should we not expect from others and demand from 
ourselves in behalf of that Cause as lavish an offering 
of treasure and of life? A tithe of the sacrifice that is 
so cheerfully made in Canada and the United States for 
the aims of the War would go far to realize the aims of 
the foreign undertakings of the Church. 

4. Because of its rewarding character. The War not 
only has uncovered splendid deposits of loyalty, heroism, 
chivalry, resourcefulness, determination, patience and sac- 
rificial unselfishness, it has also highly developed these 
qualities. There have been many apostles of the value 
of war in awakening and cultivating the resources of the 
human spirit. **One of the prime dangers of civilization," 
said Colonel Roosevelt a few years ago, "has always 
been its tendency to cause the loss of the virile fighting 
virtues, of the fighting edge." The irony of it is that 
he addressed these words to an audience in Berlin. Evi- 
dently his remarks were heeded. But the truth of his 
words has been more than demonstrated by the present 
War which has developed not only qualities of virility and 
ruggedness but, in many at least, the finer qualities of 
compassion, kindliness, forbearance and sacrifice. It has 



Mobilisation of Christian Forces 147 

taught many lessons, such as eeonomy and self -discipline, 
which we needed to learn. It has brought to the surface 
our finest national ideals. It has put a new quality into 
our patriotism and fused us into a new national unity. 
It has broadened our outlook, sharpened our perceptions, 
brought us closer to reality, given us a truer standard 
of values. So it has been in Great Britain. Mr. Lloyd 
George in his famous Queen*s Hall speech on September 
19, 1914, said of the effects of the War even at that early 
date: 

It is bringing a new outlook for all classes. The great flood of 
luxury and sloth which had submerged the land is receding, and a 
new Britain is appearing. . . . We have been living in a sheltered 
valley for generations. We have been too comfortable and too 
indulgent, many, perhaps, too selfish, and the stern hand of fate has 
scourged us to an elevation where we can see the great everlasting 
things that matter for a nation — -the great peaks we had forgotten, 
of Honour, Duty, Patriotism, and, clad in glittering white, the great 
pinnacle of Sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven. 

For these most useful awakenings and developments 
in the individual human spirit and in our corporate life 
we need something like a war. 

Something like a war. But not war itself. It exacts 
too much of us and awakens too much within us that would 
better be left dormant. A "moral equivalent for war" 
is Professor William James' familiar phrase. And in the 
missionary undertaking of the Church we have just that, 
an equivalent in all its helpful phases, but with none of 
its wasting or degrading aspects. It is rewarding because 
it brings into play and develops every splendid quality 
that is exercised or expanded by war. Its value to in- 
crease capacity, round out character and develop per- 
sonality is part of the experience of a multitude of men 
and women. • It is rewarding because of the satisfactions 
which it brings. There is an exhilaration in spending 
one's self in a Cause so worthy. Into this Cause we can 
pour the full voltage of our energy, the full measure of 
our days and of our devotion and know that nothing is 
wasted. The supreme glory of sacrifice is reached only 



148 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

when the Cause is supremely glorious. Read the words* 
of Sir Robert Falconer, President of the University of 
Toronto, as though they related not to the War but to 
the missionary crusade of the Church, "Men die, the 
Cause lives. . . . We are no company of footsore slaves, 
but disciplined crusaders on behalf of an imperishable 
cause," and we lift them to a yet nobler truth. But the 
great reward for every man is the inner commendation 
of his course, the ennobling sense of a duty done regard- 
less of the cost. How rich is that reward for the man 
who throws his life with abandon into this campaign for 
the redemption of men and the enthronement of Christ 
throughout the world. 

The task to which we are called in behalf of the non- 
Christian world is one that fully satisfies and abundantly 
rewards. Everything good that War can do, this crusade 
of love can do, has done and is now doing, for congrega- 
tions and colleges and also for countless men and women 
who have made it their supreme business and their con- 
trolling passion. 

This is the Call of a World Task in War Time. We 
speak of it as the call of a task, of an emergency, of a 
need. But, after all, is it not the call of Christ? In 
the present call of the nation, the call of liberty, the call 
of humanity, many a man and woman has recognized His 
clear imperative. More sharply still in this other campaign, 
through all the voices that cry out for prompt and effec- 
tive and sweeping measures by the Church for the redemp- 
tion of mankind, we should distinguish His voice of en- 
treaty and command. "Back to Christ" men often tell 
us. He is not behind us, but ahead. Our duty is to fol- 
low, to come close after Him. In this undertaking they 
do not also serve who only stand and wait. It is His will 
that we should move forward. 

The Call is distinctly individual. If we are near enough 
to catch His voice at all, it comes to each of us as a 
piercingly personal call. No one is excused. No one 



*In his Convocation address, September, 1917. 



Mobilisation of Christian Forces 149 

can shift his separate responsibility upon the shoulders 
of another. Will any of us be found slacking in the 
day of God's power? Let us each earnestly counsel with 
himself, "If every Christian were to answer the call with 
my degree of loyalty and devotion, would Christ be satis- 
fied, would He be vindicated and enthroned in. all the 
earth, would His message and His spirit sweep across 
the nations and meet the utmost needs of humanity? The 
world task of the Church is my world task." 



QUESTIONS FOR THOUGHT AND 
DISCUSSION 

For discussion in groups only a few questions should be 
used. They should be carefully selected and given out in 
advance. 

CHAPTER I 

What seem to you to be the seeds from which this war 
has grown? What things other than war are the fruits 
of such seeds? 

Are any such seeds or such fruits to be found on your 
college campus? In your home town? In your nation? 

On what grounds has it been contended that the Golden 
Rule is not practicable between nations? What is your 
own opinion and how do you defend it? 

What is the most convincing evidence of the lack of 
reality in the Christianity of Anglo-Saxons and Amer- 
icans — national sins, wrong international attitudes, the 
survival of war or the spirit of hate? 

Does it seem to you inevitable that the soldier should have 
hatred toward his enemy in his heart? Can a nation or 
an individual wage war with genuine love and goodwill 
toward the enemy? What is the testimony of this War 
on this point? 

Would our hands be weakened in war if all hate were taken 
out of our souls? How is the spirit of hate being de- 
veloped? How may we offset this spirit? 

What are the most striking arguments you could make 
to prove that Christianity is not ''played out" or im- 
potent? Could you argue that it now appears to be 
more potent than ever? 

Do you believe that war can be destroyed by the increase 
of education, of science, of commerce, of law? What 

151 



152 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

are the reasons for your belief? Wherein, in your opin- 
ion, does the hope of the ultimate destruction of war lie? 
Why? 

Do you think that Christian principles, if they had been 
allowed free play in Christian lives, would have pre- 
vented the present War? What principles? 

What seem to you to be the main obstacles to reality in re- 
ligion? How can such obstacles be overcome? Does the 
strongest demand for religious reality today come from 
individual, national or international life? 

Do you think that an American or Canadian can be an en- 
thusiastic and active advocate of war in the present in- 
stance and justify himself as a man of peace? Why or 
why not? 

What seem to you the surest tests of the reality of a per- 
son's religion? Of a nation's? 

What are the characteristics of a universal religion? 

Is the religion of your campus worth sending to the stu- 
dents of other lands? Is your religion, the one you live, 
worth sharing with others? 

Would the religion Jesus Christ lived solve the world's 
problem? Would there be war if all men lived the reli- 

- gion He lived? Would there be hatred if His principles 
governed the relations between classes and between na- 
tions ? 

Of the reasons which th€ War has brought out for the 
immediate propagation of our faith among the nations, 
which appeals to you as the strongest? Why? 

In what way would you show that foreign missions are 
the constructive counterpart of the War we are now 
carrying on? 

What does history show about the vitality of a religion 
that is not shared? 

CHAPTER II 

What aspects of Christianity are today most in need of 

vindication ? 
Draft an outline for an address which, if you were a 

leader of the native church in China, you would make 



Questions for Thought and Discussion 153 

to persuade 3'our non-Christian countrymen that Chris- 
tianit>' has not failed. 

Up to what point would victory for the Allies carry hu« 
manit>' in the establishment of a truly Christian interna- 
tional order? Can an internationalized world be the 
final outcome of the War unless it first exists in the 
hearts of men and women? 

On what evils does provincialism rest? What is the cure 
for it? 

Do you agree with the statement that "no one can hence- 
forth be called educated whose study has not been done 
in an atmosphere of world interest"? How many peo- 
ple do 3*ou know, or know of, who really think interna- 
tionally? 

How can we change people's thinking and make it inter- 
national rather than provincial? What responsibility 
does it seem to you rests upon students to lead in inter- 
national thinking? 

Do you agree with the college professor who recently said 
that no man or woman would be fit for the political 
duties of a citizen in 1919 who knew nothing of mis- 
sions ? 

W^hat is distinctive in the national ambitions of Canada? 
Of the United States? What is the besetting sin of na- 
tionalism in these nations? 

What elements may nationalism rightly preserve as the 
spirit of Christian internationalism develops? How is a 
nation to learn the lesson of self-master>^? 

In what ways may globe trotters and non-missionary 
Westerners residing in the cities of the Orient 
strengthen the hands of the missionary? How v.'ould 
you summarize the white peril in Africa? 

How does the factory legislation of your state or prov- 
ince compare with that of Japan? To what extent do you 
think the conditions existing in the industrial plants of 
your nation will affect those of the East? 

How can the world, which commerce., travel, education, 
improved means of communication, etc., have made a 
neighborhood, be transformed into a brotherhood? 



154 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

What is your opinion of the Oriental exclusion laws of 
Canada? Of the United States? What would seem 
to you a fair method of regulating immigration, one 
which would be worthy of an internationalized world? 

If you were an Oriental student, who knew nothing of 
Christianity and Christian civilization save what you 
learned of them on your campus, what would be your 
estimate of them? 

How may an attitude of friendliness be shown to the 
Orientals and Latin Americans who are studying in the 
United States and Canada? To what wholesome ele- 
ments in our national life should we seek to expose 
them? 

What contacts between the West and the East other than 
those mentioned in the chapter should be Christianized? 

In your judgment, wherein lies the closest connection be- 
tween world missions and world peace? 

What is the greatest danger that threatens the backwash of 
Eastern influence upon the West? 

How may the ^*Yellow Peril" be turned into a "Golden 
Opportunity" ? 

What seems to you the greatest single reason demanding 
that we give our most earnest and immediate attention 
to the Christianizing of all our impacts upon other peo- 
ples? Would you place Christian missions first among 
these impacts? Why? 

CHAPTER III 

Of the new difficulties which the War has created in mis- 
sionary work, which seems to you the most serious? 
Why? 

In what respects may these several difficulties prove to 
be advantages? 

In what ways and by what means is the War likely to 
affect caste in India? 

What social customs and ideas are now undergoing trans- 
formation in Islam? 

What aspects of the modern life of Japan are now in a 
plastic condition? 



Questions for Thought and Discussion 155 

Hgw would you express the religious idea at the heart of 
democracy? What connection have Christian missions 
with the spread of democracy in the earth? 

What modern problems common to the nations of the 
East find no adequate solution in their traditional faiths ? 

What missionary opportunity do you see in the present 
collapse of Islam's political power? 

If you were a missionary, what advantage would you 
take of the sharp distinction that the War has revealed 
between essential Christianity and the attitudes and 
practices of conventional Christianity in the West? 

Impersonate an Indian soldier on his return from France 
telling an audience in his home village of the friend- 
liness shown to him by Christians during the War. 

How do you account for the increased vitality of the 
Church in the mission field during the years of the War? 
How may that vitality be conserved? 

Which is more significant for the future of Christianity 
in the Orient, the mass movement in Inilia or the turn- 
ing to Christ of the educated classes in China? Why? 
(This question may take the form of a debate. Mate- 
rial may be found in Bishop Oldham's "India, Malaysia 
and the Philippines," Chap V, and G. S. Eddy's "Students 
of Asia," Chap, IV, also in recent files of missionary 
periodicals.) 

CHAPTER IV 

How can the splendid sympathies and generosity which the 
sufferings of the War have roused be conserved after the 
War is over? 

What are some of the lessons which the West may learn 
from the East? 

In what ways are the peoples of non-Christian l^nds suffer- 
ing because of the War? 

Are there any sufferings akin to these in the non-Christian 
nations when there is no War? 

How do you explain the fact that such sufferings have al- 
ways existed in non-Christian nations, and that we h?ive 
not done more to relieve them? 



156 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

In what ways is the War likely to increase the needs of non- 
Christian peoples ? 

What do you consider the greatest single cause of the pov- 
erty in the non-Christian world? 

What has religion to do with meeting the problems of pov- 
erty, disease and degradation? 

What have the religions and customs of non-Christian lands 
done to children? 

Which do you think is the most heartbreaking, the sorrow 
of the English widow or that of the widow of India? 
Why? 

Where does the deepest degradation of womanhood appear 
in non-Christian lands? Why do you think so? 

What is distinctive in Christianity regarding the honoring 
of womanhood? 

What need in non-Christian nations is making today, the 
most urgent appeal for relief? 

How would Jesus' view of the worth of the individual and 
of social responsibility compare with that of the non- 
Christian religions? (See E. D. Soper's "The Faiths of 
Mankind.") 

What is it that makes it possible for you to bear sorrow 
without despair? 

What difference would it make to you to have to meet great 
suffering without that? 

If you were going out as a foreign missionary, what aspect 
of the world's present need would you hope primarily 
to relieve? 

Write a brief summary of what Christian missions are 
now doing, apart from the direct preaching of the Gos- 
pel, to meet the needs of the non-Christian nations. 

In what ways can we help to lessen the pain of the people 
of non-Christian countries? 

CHAPTER V 

How would you define the aims of the War? 

How would you define the aims of the foreign missionary 

movement? 
What do you think would be the effect on the bringing to 



Questions for Thought and Discussion 157 

pass of the new and righteous world for which our 
armies fight, if we should lessen our work on the mission 
field because we were at war? 

What answer would you give to a person who said that he 
thought the work of Christian missions should be re- 
trenched during war time? 

What would you say to one who said that while he did not 
believe in retrenchment he felt that we should not attempt 
to do more than keep up existing missionary work until 
after the War? 

What attitude have Great Britain and Canada taken toward 
their missionary work during this War? 

How do you account for the missionary awakenings which 
so often have occurred in times of national disturbance 
and disaster? 

What signs have you observed of a similar awakening in 
the Protestant churches of North America during the 
present War period? 

What demands will such an awakening make upon the col- 
leges, universities and theological seminaries? How may 
these institutions help to create a missionary uprising in 
the Church today? 

What seems to you the greatest single thing which will 
create and maintain a permanent world peace? 

What relation has the missionary enterprise to this ? 

How near did the early Christians come to giving the 
Gospel to the entire world in their day? (See C. R. 
Watson, *'God's Plan of World Redemption," pp. 121, 
124-125, 141-152.) How do you account for the rapid 
spread of Christianity in that era? 

Is it correct to. say that it must be God's intention that: 
some generation should complete the evangelization of 
the world and that until the contrary is proven through 
the effort, we should reckon that ours is the generation 
to do it? Why or why not? 

In your judgment, what factors in the present world sit- 
uation present the strongest appeal for an immediate 
program of reaching the whole of humanity with the 
Gospel? 



158 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

In what respects is the world more open to the Christian 

message than it ever was before? 
What lessons may we learn from the spread of Islam in 

Africa? 
What is the most useful equipment for her world task that 

the Church has gained from her missionary experience? 

Why do you think so? 
How would you answer one who objected to the project of 

carrying the Christian message into all the world on the 

ground that it would be too costly in men and money? 
When would you consider that a nation could be called 

"evangelized" ? 
Have we greater or less reason to hold to the Watchword 

today than Christian students had when it was adopted? 

Why? 
How does the acceptance of the Watchword as a personal 

challenge and purpose enrich one's life? What can each 

one of us do for its realization? 

CHAPTER VI 

How would you attempt to awaken a missionary interest in 
a Christian to whom the world aspects of Christianity 
had not yet appealed ? 

How do you account for the lack of missionary interest in 
so many Christians? 

What arguments would you use in trying to induce a friend 
to join a group for the study and discussion of the world 
problems of the Christian religion? 

By what methods might missionary intelligence be devel- 
oped in your college? Church? 

What constitute powers of leadership? Write a letter to a 
busy but efficient Christian asking him, or her, to take 
the chairmanship of a missionary committee. 

What constitutes an adequate program of missionary giv- 
ing? 

In what ways can the nation's method of mobilizing man 
power be duplicated in the world campaign of the church? 

How do you think a large expansion of foreign missionary 
work would affect the work in behalf of home needs? 



Questions for Thought and Discussion 159 

What, in your judgment, constitutes a missionary call? 
How did the call come to any missionaries of whom you 
know? 

Is a student justified in volunteering for foreign missionary 
service if at present his Board has more applicants than 
it can send? 

What do you consider the indispensable qualifications for a 
successful missionary? 

How can prayer for missions be systematized without be- 
coming mechanical? 

What expansion would you look for within the life of one 
who became earnest and conscientious in prayer for the 
world enterprise of the church? 

What appears to you the strongest reason for a thorough 
mobilization of the church for her world campaign? 
Why? 

How would you show that the foreign missionary undertak- 
ing furnishes a moral equivalent for war? 

What would it involve for you if you should commit 
yourself fully to the world program of Christ? 

SUGGESTIONS FOR AUXILIARY READING 

Since the course is concerned with movements and de- 
velopments of the hour, the best reference material must be 
sought in periodicals, especially The Missionary Reviezv of 
the World, and in pamphlets and reports published by 
Foreign Mission Boards. 

Some of the best books for auxiliary reading are the fol- 
lowing : 

G. S. Eddy — The Students of Asia. 

G. S. Eddy — With Our Soldiers in France. 

W. P. Faunce — Social Aspects of Foreign Missions. 

H. E. Fosdick — The Challenge of the Present Crisis. 

Sidney L. Gulick — America and the Orient. 

[E. T. Iglehart, Editor] — The Christian Movement in 

the Japanese Empire. 
[E. C. Lobenstine, Editor] — China Mission Year Book. 
[Chas. S. Macfarland, Editor] — The Churches 0/ 
Christ in Time of War. 



i6o The Call of a World Task in War Time 

J. R. Mott— The Present World Situation. 

J. R. Mott — The Decisive Hour of Christian Missions. 

J. R. Mott — The Evangelization of the World in this 
Generation. 

J. H. Oldham — The World and the Gospel. 

H. F. Ward and R. H. Edwards — Christianizing Com- 
munity Life. 



APPENDIX A 
SOME PRAYERS FOR USE IN WAR TIME 

A PRAYER FOR WORLD FRIENDSHIP 

By Harry Emerson Fosdick 

Father of all nations, endue us with vision, and courage, 
and resource in Thee, that the crisis of the world may be- 
come the opportunity of the Kingdom. Guide our country, 
empower our churches, inspire and restrain ourselves and 
all men that righteousness may triumph. For wisdom to 
discern the means most profitable to abiding peace and in- 
ternational concord, for leaders to point the way and for 
multitudes to follow them, till all nations are one fraternity, 
we pray to Thee. Make real the brotherhood of man, O 
God, and glorify our race in a fellowship of friendly peo- 
ples. O Lord, crucified afresh by the sin of the world, after 
this Calvary, grant us, we beseech Thee, an Easter Day and 
a triumphant Christ. 

A PRAYER IN TIME OF WAR 

By Isaac Ogden Rankin 

O Lord of Hosts, in whose hands are all the counsels and 
events of earth, in this hour of our nation's trial we appeal 
to Thee. In war and battle may we always be the instru- 
ments of Thy judgment and Thy righteousness. Grant us 
deliverance from disaster, and, if it please Thee, glorious 
and enduring victory. Bless especially with grace and wis- 
dom Thy servant, the President of the United States, the 
commander of our armies. Preserve our ships upon the sea 
and our soldiers on the shore. Purify our nation's hearts 
from pride and cruelty and our lips from boasting. Let us 

i6t 



1 62 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

not go forth to battle as those who are greedy of gain or 
honor, not in hatred or in love of strife, but in desire of 
justice and as helpers of the weak. In all experiences 
through which Thou makest us to pass may the assurance 
of Thy rule in the affairs of men be our confidence and 
consolation. Remember the wounded and the sick and 
those who are appointed to die, and make them sharers of 
Thy kingdom. Strengthen us for all endurance, and espe- 
cially sustain and comfort those who mourn for the dead. 
Deny us not Thy swift decision in mercy both to us and to 
our enemies. And may the coming of Thy kingdom bring 
all cruelties and jealousies, all strife and hatred, to a 
speedy and eternal end, through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
Amen. 

A PRAYER FOR USE OF STUDENTS IN WAR TIME 
By Edward I. Bos worth 

Almighty God, Father of all mankind, have mercy on us. 
Forgive us that hitherto we have not looked with humility, 
self-sacrifice and devotion upon the lot of those less favored 
than ourselves in our own and other lands. We now feel 
the stern, loving pressure of Thy will upon us. Therefore, 
we pray Thee, purify our souls and fit them for the times 
and tasks that face us. 

We offer ourselves and all that we have to Thee, to be 
used in life and death to bring a larger life to all men of 
every race. May those of us who are called to take up arms 
in the battle for a better world be everywhere true followers 
of Jesus Christ. In camp may our hearts be kept pure and 
the Gospel word be often on our lips. In the fierceness of 
fighting may we be quiet and unafraid. May those of us 
who will die in battle find the Lord of life with us in the 
death hour. May those of us who will bring our brothers 
to death do the deed without hate, eager to meet them again, 
sometime and somewhere to do the will of God together. 

Grant to those who minister in hospitals power to bring 
not only healing to the bodies but peace to the souls of the 
sick and wounded far from home. 



Appendix A 163 

Give patience to all who in suspense wait and pray at 
home and fortify their souls for whatever message may 
come. 

Give peace to the nations in Thine own time, O God. 

In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, the Savior of the 
world. Amen. 

A PRAYER FOR OUR ENEMIES 

By Charles Gore, Bishop of Oxford 

Give Thy Blessing, O Father, to the people of that great 
and fair land, with whose rulers we are at war. Strengthen 
the hands of the wise and just, who follow charity and look 
for justice and freedom, among us as among them. Drive 
away the evil passions of hatred, suspicion and the fever of 
war, among us as among them. Relieve and comfort the 
anxious, the bereaved, the sick and tormented, and all the 
pale hosts of sufferers, among us as among them. Reward 
the patient industry, loving kindness and simplicity of the 
common people and all the men of good heart, among us as 
among them. Forgive the cruelty, the ambition, the foolish 
pride, the heartless schem.e, of which the world rulers have 
been guilty. Teach us everywhere to repent and to amend. 
Help us so to use our present afflictions which come from us 
and not from Thee, that we may build on the ruins of our 
evil past, a firm and lasting peace. Grant that, united in a 
good understanding, with these who are now become our 
enemies, though they are our brethren in Christ, they and 
we may establish a new order, wherein the nations may live 
together in trust and fellowship, in the emulation of great 
achievements and the rivalry of good deeds, truthful, hon- 
est and just in our dealing one with another, and follow- 
ing in all things the standard of the Son of Man whom 
we have denied and put to shame, and crucified afresh 
upon the Calvary of our battleground. Amen. 

PRAYER FOR THE UNITY OF GOD'S PEOPLE 

O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only 
Savior, the Prince of Peace, give us grace seriously to lay 



164 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divi- 
sions. Take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatsoever 
else may hinder us from godly union and concord: that as 
there is but one Body and one Spirit, and one hope of our 
calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and 
Father of us all, so we may be all of one heart and of one 
soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith 
and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify 
Thee ; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 



APPENDIX B 

THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR TO 
FOREIGN MISSIONS 

The church at home and abroad is confronted by a chal- 
lenge and an opportunity never exceeded. Some are coun- 
selling hesitation and even the curtailment of effort and 
offerings, upon the plea that the state should now command 
all the resources of men and of money. 

Representing the mission organizations and forces of 
North America, the Committee cA Reference and Counsel, 
through its officers, hereby appeals to the Christian mission- 
ary organizations and constituencies of America as well as 
to every individual disciple of Jesus Christ. 

We recognize that the spirit of patriotism, calling for 
supreme sacrifice in the interest of righteousness and of 
country, must not be discouraged and that the cry of dis- 
tressed humanity cannot be ignored. While some Mission- 
ary Boards are not contemplating special and untried un- 
dertakings or planning the erection of buildings not im- 
mediately necessary, we cannot escape from the conviction 
that this period of war, with all its exacting demands, may 
be the supreme hour for undertaking new and daring enter- 
prises for Christ and the Church. 



Appendix B 165 

We would call attention anew to the significant fact that 
the large missionary enterprises had their origin in times 
of the greatest national and international upheavals. The 
missionary societies of Great Britain were launched while 
Europe was rent asunder by the Napoleonic Wars and the 
first missionaries sent abroad from the United States began 
their work during the War of 1812. At the time of the 
American Civil War new foreign missionary organizations 
sprang into being and the old Boards experienced signal 
expansion. In the history of the church, widespread dis- 
order and physical suffering and need have incited to 
greater devotion and sacrifice. 

We are also face to face with the startling fact that the 
work of more than 2,000 Teuton missionaries has become 
disrupted and is in danger of dissolution whereby some 
700,000 followers of Christ in pagan lands may be left as 
sheep without a shepherd. This throws an immediate and 
enormous responsibility upon the Christians of England and 
North America to conserve the devotion and sacrifice 
which German missionaries have given to building up 
Christian communities and institutions. England is hero- 
ically assuming a large share of the burden; we of America 
must not hold back. 

The Asiatic and African races are undergoing sweeping 
transformations in their thinking, their relations to the 
nations of the West, and in their religious conceptions. 
They have been fighting the white man's w.ar shoulder to 
shoulder with Europeans and upon a plane of equality. De- 
pendent peoples who are now sharing in this conflict cannot 
return to former positions of contented subjection. 

China and Japan have held the balance of power in East- 
ern Asia, constituting a new and significant relation to the 
Western nations. Already the Far East is seething with a 
new national and international life for which she is seeking 
a substantial religious foundation. 

These conditions demand, while the situation is plastic, 
the concentration of the unifying forces of Christendom. 
Today the great majority of these people are more acces- 
sible, and even more eager for Christian instruction, than 



1 66 The Call of a World Task in War Time 

they have ever been before in all the history of modern 
missions. These conditions cannot be expected indefinitely 
to continue. 

The foreign missionaries, with their prestige, their insti- 
tutions already established, and with their message of com- 
fort, hope and regeneration, hold a position unique in 
history and pregnant with assurances of universal interna- 
tional good order and brotherhood and permanent peace 
for the world. Foreign missionaries can now render a gen- 
uine patriotic and national service, both to the country 
from which they come and the country in which they serve. 
Thoughtful people have come to realize, what men eminent 
in statecraft are beginning to affirm, that foreign missions 
have been an effective force for breaking down barriers be- 
tween East and West. It is clear that foreign missionaries 
are true soldiers of the better order which is to bind the 
world together after the war. They are quite as important 
to America as her Army or her Navy. By serving the 
world most effectively they also greatly serve the state. 

We therefore call upon all who love their country, who 
long and pray for universal brotherhood and for an abiding 
peace among nations, who hope to see the principles taught 
by Jesus Christ become the principles underlying all human 
society and ruling the national life of the world, to regard 
no effort too exhausting and no sacrifice too great for the 
fullest vitalization of all missionary agencies and for the 
completest possible mobilization of the forces of the Chris- 
tion church for the redemption of the world. 

To this end we implore sincere prayer and united inter- 
cession coupled with unstinted sacrificial giving. 

On behalf of the Committee of Reference and Counsel. 

James L. Barton^ 

Chairman, 
Wm. I. Chamberlain^ 

Vice-Chairman, 
George Heber Jones^ 
Secretary. 



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